Cocaine Bear: watch the first trailer for 2023’s wildest film
The film is based on the remarkable true story of a 175-pound bear who ate a bag of cocaine in 1985
By Tomás Mier
Cocaine Bear has a new trailer. On Wednesday, Universal Pictures released a teaser for the Feb. 24 movie inspired by the real-life story of a bear who was found dead after ingesting cocaine in Kentucky.
The trailer for the campy film, directed by Elizabeth Banks, opens with paramedics entering a bloodied house and finding a bear inside a room. “Beth, we should go,” says a paramedic before the bear breaks down a door and lets out a roar.
The trailer then shows a TV news outlet saying that cocaine had been found in the deserted area, which the bear seemed to be loving. The trailer then devolves into the bear who “did fucking cocaine,” as scenes show people searching for the coked-out bear climbing trees, people getting into fights, and the community shooting at the animal.
“Oh man, you fucked,” says a man after another gets attacked. The trailer ends with the bear trying to jump into an ambulance before attacking a couple.
“It’s a fun conversation piece inspired by this insane true event from 1985 and an opportunity to cut through a little noise,” Banks told the New York Times in September. “The title alone! I was clear with Universal. I made them make sure that we could use the title in America. I was like, ‘I don’t want to direct this if you’re going to tell me it’s going to be called ‘Bear in the Woods.’”
The film, directed by Banks in Ireland, is set to follow a real-life story inspired by a 175-pound bear who ate a bag of cocaine in 1985. (An autopsy later determined that the bear had ingested about three or four grams.)
Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” the official who performed the bear’s autopsy said at the time. “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.”
The film is set to star the likes of Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Kristofer Hivju, and Hannah Hoekstra.