Cocaine Bear: 2023 release date for Elizabeth Banks movie about a bear’s cocaine-fueled rampage

Elizabeth Banks has directed a “character-driven thriller” called Cocaine Bear, and Deadline reports that Universal will be giving the film a theatrical release on February 24, 2023. You were probably sold on this as soon as you read the title of the movie, but now we’ll give a bit more information. Cocaine Bear is based on true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985. As our own Kevin Fraser reported last year, the true story goes like this:

In 1985, convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton was on a smuggling run from Columbia and had dumped several packages full of cocaine before bailing from the plane himself. Unfortunately, he hit his head on the tail of the aircraft and wound up in a freefall to the ground where he was found dead in someone’s driveway. Several months later, a 175-pound black bear was found dead after devouring approximately $15 million worth of cocaine that had been dropped by Thornton. “Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” the medical examiner who’d performed the bear’s necropsy said. “There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that. Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it.”

Scripted by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear‘s take on the concept finds

an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow… and blood.

The film stars Keri Russell (Antlers), Margo Martindale (The Americans), Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Kahyun Kim (American Gods), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), and newcomer Scott Seiss.

Cocaine Bear was produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Aditya Sood of Lord Miller, Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman of Brownstone Productions, and Brian Duffield. Robin Fisichella and Nikki Baida serve as executive producers.

The February 24th release date puts Cocaine Bear right in between the February 17th release Disney’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the March 3rd release of Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons… which doesn’t seem to me like the best placement for a movie like this. But we’ll see how it goes.

Are you looking forward to Cocaine Bear? Let us know by leaving a comment below.