There is a Cocaine Bear Movie Coming
Every once in a while the news covers a bear on the loose in a neighborhood. That’s a big story if you live in a large city. The only run in with a bear you might have in the city is with a group of Trash Pandas looking for some leftovers. Friendly reminder: Racoon at night everything’s alright. Racoon at day run away. In a few months there is a movie coming about a bear that the news stations would love to cover. COCAINE BEAR! Imagine Jim Gardner leading off the news with this story and the chyron possibilities under him.
Cocaine Bear is being directed by, UPenn’s own, Elizabeth Banks. Big Banks fan here. She’s a talented actress, and her comedy chops are really impressive. Her directing abilities fall right in line with her acting abilities, but you already knew this since you probably love the Pitch Perfect movies she directed. I mean come on, who doesn’t love those movies! She is now directing a movie based on, seemingly unbelievable, but true events. A drug smuggling plane filled with cocaine was flying over a forest in Kentucky when the pilot had to drop the drugs because the cargo was too heavy for the plane. The smuggler jumped to get his drugs, but his parachute failed to open leaving the cocaine laying in the forest. The story goes that a black bear doing black bear things finds it. Now I’m assuming (because I’m not sure what the bear drug market is like) this bear was looking for food and tried to get the scent of this possible food substance by giving the drugs a good sniff. Then another good sniff, a 3rd for good measure and before he/she knows it all 40 plastic containers of cocaine are open. This story is from 1985, almost 40 years old. How has it taken this long for someone to come up with a movie about this?
A couple things, the cast is pretty great: Kerry Russell, Jessie Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones) and the late Ray Liotta (in his final performance.) The trailer should be dropping soon, but if it’s anything like the movie’s tagline on Wikipedia, “In a Kentucky forest, an American black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine” and the movie poster then I think we’re in for a treat.
Cocaine Bear is scheduled for Theatrical release on February 24th.
In the unofficial list of “____ bear” where does Cocaine Bear fall? I think probably has the potential to crack the top 5. Depending on the success of the film, and any spinoff cartoons we could see, Cocaine Bear unable to sit still in the 5 position and fidgeting it’s way up the list.
1. Winnie the Pooh Bear
2. Smokey Bear
3. Paddington Bear
4. Yogi Bear
5. Cocaine Bear
6. The Berenstain Bears
