Today might be Christmas day, but that doesn’t mean horror movies and thrillers can’t be celebrated. Earlier, Scream fans got a glimpse at a new holiday-themed poster, and that’s not the only non-Christmasy movie that was promoted on this holiday. The folks behind Cocaine Bear are dreaming of a white Christmas with their new motion poster. In case you missed it, the upcoming film is based on a real story about, well, a bear who accidentally ingests a whole bunch of cocaine.
“Are you having a white Christmas this year?” the movie’s account asked. You can check out the neat poster below:
Are you having a white Christmas this year? pic.twitter.com/pL6aORx89G
— Cocaine Bear (@cocainebear) December 25, 2022
Cocaine Bear stars Keri Russell (The Americans), Emmy-winner Margo Martindale (The Americans), Emmy-winner Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark), 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.
Directed by Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels, Pitch Perfect 2) from a screenplay by Jimmy Warden (The Babysitter: Killer Queen), Cocaine Bear is produced by Oscar® winners Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. The Machines) and Aditya Sood (The Martian) for Lord Miller, by Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman (Pitch Perfect franchise) for Brownstone Productions, and by Brian Duffield (Spontaneous). Robin Fisichella (Ma) will executive produce.
The new action-comedy is based on the true story of a black bear who ate an incredible amount of cocaine after a drug runner’s plane crashed in 1985. Andrew C. Thornton II was a former narcotics officer and convicted drug smuggler, who dumped a duffel bag of cocaine out of his plane because his plane was too heavy. Thornton intended to recover the bag himself, jumping out of the plane with a parachute, but the parachute was faulty, and Thornton died. Three months later, a 175-pound black bear was found dead in Georgia alongside 40 opened plastic containers of cocaine. The tale became popular in the region, and the animal itself was taxidermied and is still displayed at the Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, Kentucky, where you can also buy “Cokey the Bear” merch. Naturally, the movie is taking a lot of liberties.
I felt a lot of sympathy for the bear,” Banks told EW about the real-life Cocaine Bear. “Like, wow, this bear – which, in real life, ended up dead after eating all this coke – ended up being sort of collateral damage in this War on Drugs. And I just thought, ‘Well, then this movie can be a revenge story for the bear.’ And it just gave me a point of view and a purpose for making it. Like, there’s a real message here: ‘We should not f*ck with nature, nature will win.'”
Cocaine Bear is scheduled to hit theaters on February 24, 2023.