Cocaine Bear

The new movie "Cocaine Bear" is a highly fictionalized account of a drug-smuggling drop gone wrong in September 1985. Here's the real story behind the film.

While Thornton’s loved ones guessed that he would have been proud of his infamous end — “He would have loved the concept of the warriors who fall from the sky,” his ex-wife told The Post in 1985 — others didn’t pay much mind to what Thornton might have thought in his final moments. “I hope he got a hell of a high out of that [cocaine].” Warden told The Post that the man ultimately responsible for “Cocaine Bear” is not featured after the first 10 minutes of the new movie. The ring was linked to a larger group called “The Company,” a syndicate running drugs and guns that authorities estimated in 1980 had more than 300 members and $26 million worth of boats and planes. Alonso, Georgia’s chief medical examiner, told reporters the bear was found “in a very badly decomposed state” at Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, surrounded by several plastic bags that authorities estimated had held about 75 pounds of cocaine. [2015 blog post](https://kyforky.com/blogs/journal/cocaine-bear) that the stuffed bear was once owned by country music star Waylon Jennings before it became a spectacle for shoppers. Three months later, after authorities discovered that a 175-pound bear had died of what the coroner described as a stomach “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” the animal was given a new name in popular culture: “ When Thornton was found with a broken neck after his parachute did not open, he had on him $4,500 in cash, two pistols, two knives, ropes, food and more than 70 pounds of cocaine, according to police. “Cocaine Bear,” a dark comedy that premieres Friday in theaters nationwide, is a highly fictionalized account, in which the titular 500-pound American black bear eats a duffel bag of cocaine and goes on a killing rampage in Georgia, forcing tourists to band together to survive an apex predator hopped up on coke. 11, 1985, Fred Myers got up to shave at his home in Knoxville when he looked out his window and saw a body tangled up in a parachute. Long before he turned to drug smuggling and made a bear very famous, Thornton lived the high life. But Thornton’s life took a turn after he dropped out of college for a second time in 1966.

O'Shea Jackson, Jr., from left, Alden Ehrenreich, Ayoola Smart and Ray Liotta in a scene from “Cocaine Bear,” directed by Elizabeth Banks. By The Associated Press |. PUBLISHED: February 24, 2023 at 4:45 a.m. | UPDATED: February 24 ...

Neither work.If you want to use a bear to talk about larger things, look no further than 1997’s dark “The Edge,” with a screenplay by David Mamet exploring masculinity and intellectualism, or even 1988’s light “The Bear,” about the nobleness of creatures — it even has a bear cub eating hallucination-inducing mushrooms. Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. “Jane,” the opening song, is an homage to “Wet Hot American Summer,” which Banks co-starred in and had the same Jefferson Starship opening tune. There’s a reference to Pines Mall, which is a little nod to “Back to the Future,” but who really cares? The best thing to say is that, even at an efficient 95 minutes, “Cocaine Bear” just snorts along. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

New movies streaming or in theaters this weekend: A crazy true story drives 'Cocaine Bear,' David Harbour is a friendly phantom in 'We Have a Ghost.'

(And did we mention they're both in love with her, too?) She's at first put off by a tight-knit group of three British women (Sally Phillips, Rakhee Thakrar and Miriam Margolyes) already undergoing chemotherapy but soon becomes a fourth on their beneficial, fantastical "trips" in a sentimental narrative that smartly leans on MacDowell's Southern charms. The comedian is a standout in this thoughtful sci-fi dramedy as Cam, the host of a kid's science show with astronaut dreams. The teen finds understanding and comfort via an enigmatic drifter (a great Trevante Rhodes) with past ties to his parents. In the ensemble comedy, an A-list movie star (MacDowell) is diagnosed with colon cancer while in the U.K. Darious (Jalyn Hall) is a 14-year-old home from boarding school for the summer who immediately butts heads with his strict father (Shamier Anderson) and is beat up by an old friend. Come for the weird science, stay for a touching reveal and one whopper of an ending. Kevin (Jahi Winston) makes the spooky discovery that their house is inhabited by a bowling-shirted spirit named Ernest (Harbour), who can't talk but forms a bond with the youngster. Joel Courtney and Anna Grace Barlow play teens brought into their flock in an aggressively anti-drug melodrama that, if nothing else, preaches to its own choir. When Kevin's dad (Mackie) puts a video of Ernest online, the ghost becomes a viral sensation and a target of the government. A single mom (Keri Russell), a St. Where to watch: In theaters

In an age of big C-suite visions of streaming power and total global market domination, Universal Pictures has spent the first two months of 2023 seemingly ...

But most of the violence in Cocaine Bear is filmed with a perfunctory ugliness. The trick about the truly good schlock that you remember is there’s visceral joy in the viscera—a playfulness that invites audiences to indulge in bad taste. In its current diluted form, however, all I can warn is that it’s going to be a bad trip. It might not be the sign of a good movie, but it still could be solid schlock. It’s lovely that something so tasteless can still find a place in this theatrical (and social media) climate. It’s brutal, but it comes off with an air of desperation, like a salesman following you down the street insisting their product is pure. Yet rarely did the non-bear antics gain so much as a chuckle in my audience, save the bemusing energy of Henry (Christian Convery) and Dee De (Brooklynn Prince), two wide-eyed kids who discover a mountain of coke and then a bear in a sequence that plays like every 1980s anti-drugs PSA if it was… The picture should move like a black bear consumed with a Wall Street bro’s favorite vice. Liotta of course played one of cinema’s greatest coke heads in Goodfellas, who’s last day of freedom is a symphony of paranoia and kinetic madness. Yet that is how at least 70 pounds of pure Florida Snow ended up in the Georgian mountains of the Chattahoochee River and then, subsequently, in the belly of a 175-pound black bear. As aforementioned, Cocaine Bear is loosely based on the true story of Andrew C. But when about two-thirds of this grisly spectacle is populated by meat sacks who suck the oxygen out of almost every scene, even before the bear starts tearing them apart, it becomes a fatal problem.

In September 1985, Tennessee authorities discovered the body of Andrew Carter Thornton II, a former narcotics officer turned drug smuggler who had fallen to ...

This movie sinks way below other films where the title alone describes the only thing that happens, like “Snakes on a Plane,” “We Bought a Zoo” or ...

Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. “Cocaine Bear” is like a dull butter knife against those two. “Jane,” the opening song, is an homage to “Wet Hot American Summer,” which Banks co-starred in and had the same Jefferson Starship opening tune. There’s a reference to Pines Mall, which is a little nod to “Back to the Future,” but who really cares? The best thing to say is that, even at an efficient 95 minutes, “Cocaine Bear” just snorts along. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

It is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks' insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd.

But while the suspense that had carried the film for the first two-thirds of its brisk running time dips as it nears its conclusion, “Cocaine Bear” still emerges as a hell of a high. Much of the joy of “Cocaine Bear” comes from the look of the creature itself, which is surprisingly high-tech for a cheesy, silly movie. (Both kids are great in a throwback way, reminiscent of the kinds of brash, profane characters you’d see in movies like “ [The Bad News Bears](/reviews/the-bad-news-bears-1976)” or “ [The Goonies](/reviews/the-goonies-1985).” The boy’s reaction to discovering one of these illegal bundles is not fear, but rather a cheerful: “Let’s sell drugs together!”) They include a pair of mismatched buddy drug dealers ( [Alden Ehrenreich](/cast-and-crew/alden-ehrenreich) and O’Shea Jackson Jr.); their humorless boss ( [Ray Liotta](/cast-and-crew/ray-liotta) in his final film role, recalling one of his signature performances in “ [Goodfellas](/reviews/great-movie-goodfellas-1991)”); and a police detective from the Kentucky town where the smuggler’s plane eventually crashed (Isiah Whitlock Jr., perfectly deadpan as ever). The few times “Cocaine Bear” injects even a meager amount of sentimentality, the pacing starts to lag. [Jimmy Warden](/cast-and-crew/jimmy-warden) has taken the basic facts—a 175-pound Georgia black bear ingested some cocaine that a drug smuggler dropped from an airplane in 1985—and imagined what might have happened if the bear hadn’t died, but rather sampled the stuff and gotten hooked.

If you go down to the woods today, you're in for an old-fashioned gory good time.

The movie has very little to say about the rights and wrongs of the war on drugs (besides sniggering at '80s-tastic " The ending really peters out, but most of all these characters are thinner than a line cut by a particularly stingy drug dealer. And obviously the bear didn't use banknotes to snort the coke, it just ate kilos of the stuff a brick at a time. This search element of the movie would work probably be more involving if it was a chase that required running/fighting/outsmarting of the bear. Banks' zingy direction and writer Jimmy Warden's blackly comic dialogue keep the laughs coming, with the ever-looming threat of a coked-up murderbear giving it that midnight movie frisson. This probably leaves you with a ton of questions: When and where -- and how -- did this happen?

Pusha T has shared a remix of Melle Mel's anti-drug classic "White Lines" for — wait for it — the new movie, 'Cocaine Bear.'

[Cocaine Bear trailers](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/cocaine-bear-trailer-1234639175/), the film will include some elements of the real story, though mostly, it seems like it’ll be about a coked-up bear terrorizing people in the woods. The cast includes Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, [Alden Ehrenreich](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/alden-ehrenreich-cocaine-bear-han-solo-oppenheimer-fair-play-marvel-ironheart-spider-man-1234683207/), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Ray Liotta in one of his final film roles. And you better believe the [King of Coke Rap](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/pusha-t-its-almost-dry-1338994/) not only obliged but did so by remixing Melle Mel’s 1983 anti-drug classic, [“White Lines (Don’t Do It).”](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-hip-hop-songs-of-all-time-105784/grandmaster-and-melle-mel-white-lines-dont-dont-do-it-101533/) “You heard the pilot lost the load/We call that dumb and dumber” and “The bear crawls up and under/Cocaine overload/The only fuel to his hunger”). The duffel bag and the coke appeared to be tied to a drug smuggler named Andrew Carter Thornton, who’d been found dead in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee, a few months earlier, wearing a parachute and carrying 77 pounds of cocaine. [Cocaine Bear](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/movies-2023-marvel-barbie-martin-scorsese-oppenheimer-fast-x-the-flash-wonka-1234657776/cocaine-bear-february-24-1234657815/), there’s really only one person you can call to whip up a song for a final PR push: [Pusha T](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/pusha-t/), obviously.

This is one of those. You might've noticed that the trailers for the new movie Cocaine Bear, a meme-addled romp about a grizzly bear eating a brick of coke and ...

Melle Mel, formerly of Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five, released “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” shortly after the breakup of that group. Music](https://www.stereogum.com/2208896/pusha-t-leaves-g-o-o-d-music-says-kanyes-views-are-nothing-to-tap-dance-around/news/), and his career could now go in any number of directions. You might’ve noticed that the trailers for the new movie Cocaine Bear, a meme-addled romp about a grizzly bear eating a brick of coke and going on a killing spree, heavily feature Melle Mel’s 1983 rap classic “White Lines (Don’t Do It).” Today, the movie is in theaters. “White Lines” went down in history as the anti-drug song that makes you want to do drugs. On “White Lines (Cocaine Bear Remix),” Pusha is in his comfort zone, rapping over a reworked “White Lines” beat and doing the old Will Smith thing where he recaps the movie’s plot: “It’s no storm without thunder, the bear crawls up and under/ Cocaine overload, the only fuel to his hunger.” Check out the Pusha T version and the Melle Mel original below. Its soundtrack features a new version of “White Lines” from Pusha T, the present-day rapper most associated with cocaine.

Pusha T has remixed Melle Mel's classic 'White Lines (Don't Do It)' for the new movie 'Cocaine Bear,' which hit theaters on Friday (February 24).

And RIP Ray Liotta.” “I never knew the human brain can think like this and put it on film. [“White Lines (Don’t Do It)”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwRXI-y6M9o&pp=ygUVbWVsbGUgbWVsIHdoaXRlIGxpbmVz) was released in 1983 on Sugar Hill Records. Ron Artest) was full of praise for the film. “I love this movie!!” he wrote. Thornton II, sharing the same surname as Pusha T (whose government name is Terrence Thornton).

Pusha T shares “White Lines (Cocaine Bear Remix),” taken from new movie Cocaine Bear.

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Elizabeth Banks's latest pits a drug-addled bear against a group of morons in an honest no-frills slasher.

[The late great Ray Liotta](https://gamerant.com/the-best-ray-liotta-movies/), to whom the film is dedicated, is on autopilot as a kingpin who refuses to cut his losses. It's about a bear that does cocaine and no more need be said. The most likable thing about Cocaine Bear is still its pitch. Cocaine Bear isn't quite as intelligent as either of those underrated icons, but it's still delivering what it promised. The cast of Cocaine Bear is surprisingly strong, but most of them are stuck in predictable archetypes. The one having the most fun is probably Christian Convery, who [previously starred in Sweet Tooth](https://gamerant.com/netflix-sweet-tooth-series-review/). [a 500lb black bear](https://gamerant.com/best-bears-in-movies/) who consumes a great deal of the titular stimulant. There's no way of knowing what the real Cocaine Bear got up to in its brief binge, but the poor creature was found dead with 75 pounds of the stuff in its stomach. This is the first of his films to be released after his tragic passing, but he has at least four more in production. [Phil Lord and Christopher Miller](https://gamerant.com/phil-lord-chris-miller-afterparty-season-2-spiderman-spiderverse/) who stepped in to produce. What follows is effectively a [slasher film set in](https://gamerant.com/slasher-movie-villains-inspired-real-killers/) a massive park with the knife-wielding killer replaced by an unpredictable apex predator. The only thing anyone needs to know about Cocaine Bear is its title.

Elizabeth Banks directed the film, which was written by Jimmy Warden. In the story inspired by true events, the people of a small Georgia town must try to ...

Its ticket sales are expected to drop between 55% to 65% and the film should total about $35 million to $40 million in its second weekend. I’d be excited to tell it because there are some really good ideas that we have for the subsequent movies.” Some predictions have it opening with as much as $20 million, thanks to its positive word-of-mouth (or word-of-snout) and memeability online.

Cocaine Bear, the new movie about a bear that does cocaine, is out in theaters today and in a move that should surprise no one but gold star to whoever made ...

You can watch the Cocaine Bear trailer below. It's as much a cover as it is a remix, with the king of coke rap dropping new lines like, "I ain't never been a runner, we ain't never had to wonder / You heard the pilot lost the load, call that dumb and dumber / It's no storm without thunder, the bear crawls up and under / Cocaine overload, the only fuel to his hunger" over the classic beat. Cocaine Bear, the new movie about a bear that does cocaine, is out in theaters today and in a move that should surprise no one but gold star to whoever made this happen, Pusha T has a new song on the album, a remix of Melle Mel's classic "White Lines."

The greatest joke of this blood-spattered horror-comedy from Elizabeth Banks is that it exists.

That “Cocaine Bear” is cautious about touching on this theme is understandable, maybe even preferable. And the script becomes dutifully sentimental at the end with characters forced to say things like “You’re more than a drug dealer. At one point, Cocaine Bear sniffs a hint of white powder and emerges with renewed strength. Early in the movie there’s a clip of the old “This is your brain on drugs” ad, a reminder that the story takes place against the backdrop of the drug war of the 1980s, a catastrophic policy failure with severe human ramifications that we are still living with. At its best, “Cocaine Bear” has the feel of an inside joke. Inspired by the slasher films of the 1980s, not to mention great horror-comedies from that era like the “Evil Dead” films, Banks grasps the comic potential of the gross-out. Banks doesn’t always dole out the viscera artfully (better to follow a leg with an arm, not another leg) but she commits to the too-muchness necessary for comedy. In fact, “Cocaine Bear” too often feels like a one-joke movie, stretched thin. After a pratfall in a plane leads a smuggler to drop a ton of drugs on the mountains of Georgia, a bear discovers it, snorts it up and turns into a mix of Tony Montana and Jason Voorhees. The plot twists can seem irrelevant, including a betrayal that has the impact of a soft sneeze. While it beats out “M3gan” in levels of gruesomeness, “Cocaine Bear” doesn’t have that film’s mean streak or moments of acid weirdness. Whereas “M3gan” steered clear of too much onscreen violence, angling for a PG-13 rating, “Cocaine Bear” wallows in it.

'Cocaine Bear' director Elizabeth Banks talks about the movie's star-studded cast, the right kind of gore, and defying expectations.

I also feel like with this movie, the audaciousness and boldness of not just the title, but the movie that lives up to the title, is something that creates conversation and people don’t want to miss out on that conversation. Am I going to be able to disappear into this? Am I going to get to work with interesting people? I want to continue to surprise not just the audience, but myself. Am I going to be challenged? You almost have to oversell it with the gore and the blood and the outrageousness of it because it makes it more operatic and more entertaining. That being said, I love laughing and I love funny movies and I would love to see more comedy in the theater. I thought there was a great opportunity here to make people laugh, but to also take them on a a bigger ride where the laughs are just part of it. It’s not a documentary, but I also wanted to acknowledge the reality of a bear attack. I want to go to the theater and have a communal experience. The audience is not expecting her to do as much as she does and to be as bold as she is. But she was down on the ground and she was on the wires.

Often expectations play a role in the enjoyment of entertainment. Sometimes our expectations can spoil an otherwise decent movie, but other times, ...

Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled to death by a bear in the wilds of Alaska in 2003 after he had lived among them for months at a time over a five-year period. The movie grows long in the tooth for my tastes, but there is no questioning the talent brought to bear on this production. Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin star as two rivals for the love of Elle McPherson, who are lost in the wilds of Alaska, and are being stalked by a rouge Kodiak bear. The hammy film has some fun twists and turns, and it’s interesting to watch Hopkins and Baldwin attempt to out-act each other. I found the movie funny, very funny at times, but also cliched and too on the nose for a film that is basically making fun of genre movies. Eventually she does show up again about a third of the way through the movie, and the mayhem ensues. The movie’s pacing did it a disservice, too. This set piece made the movie for me. Often expectations play a role in the enjoyment of entertainment. After the initial introduction of the cocaine-chomping fiend, the film takes its time getting back to the mayhem, probably too much time, kind of like those old Toho-produced Godzilla flicks. Objectively, a movie is what it is, but we all see it from a different lens based on our experiences, preferences, and dislikes. While I did have a fun time watching it, “Cocaine Bear” had its lulls.

Uni/Blumhouse's winter horror hit M3GAN was 94% certified fresh from Rotten Tomatoes critics, 78% with the aggregator site's audiences, a B CinemaScore and 3 1/ ...

Wednesday was $3.8M, but yesterday eased only 3% for $3.7M getting the Peyton Reed-directed sequel to a first week of $135M at 4,345 theaters. Together with Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), they open the doors of Smith’s languishing church to an unexpected revival of radical and newfound love, leading to what Time magazine called a “Jesus Revolution.” [read the review](https://deadline.com/2023/02/jesus-revolution-review-kelsey-grammer-joel-courtney-religion-hippies-1235267645/)) which already has five stars and 85% definite recommend on PostTrak. [read the review](https://deadline.com/2023/02/magic-mikes-last-dance-review-channing-tatum-salma-hayek-1235252188/)) posted $405K, -3% from Wednesday for a second week of $7.6M and running total of $20.2M at 3,034 venues. Tracking had this Kingdom Story Company movie in the single digits, but it potentially could hit $10M at 2,475 locations. [read the review](https://deadline.com/2022/12/avatar-the-way-of-water-review-james-cameron-sequel-1235196597/)) was around a half-million, +2% for a 10th week of $9.7M at 2,675 and running total of $660.6M. WETA was involved in the CG creation of Cokey the bear, the main protag here. [read the review](https://deadline.com/2023/02/80-for-brady-review-lily-tomlin-jane-fonda-rita-moreno-sally-field-tom-brady-1235246538/)) booked at 3,199 theaters, grossed $409K in fifth place on Thursday for a near $6M third week, $34.6M running total. The pic already has alright exits with 82% from Rotten Tomatoes’ audiences and four stars on ComScore and Screen Engine’s PostTrak and 72% fresh from critics. Uni/Blumhouse’s winter horror hit M3GAN was 94% certified fresh from Rotten Tomatoes critics, 78% with the aggregator site’s audiences, a B CinemaScore and 3 1/2 stars on PostTrak. [read the review](https://deadline.com/2023/02/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-review-paul-rudd-jonathan-majors-kang-marvel-1235257378/)) got juice from the Presidents Day Monday with $14.2M, discount Tuesday wasn’t so robust, with only $7M this past week. [read the review](https://deadline.com/2023/02/cocaine-bear-review-500-pound-beast-elizabeth-banks-darkly-amusing-horror-comedy-1235269067/)) is inspired by a 1985 true story when cocaine went missing in a Georgia forest after a drug runner’s plane crash, with a black bear gobbling the goods.

Movie Review: Directed by Elizabeth Banks, 'Cocaine Bear' is a loosely based-on-fact account of a bear that eats a mountain of cocaine and then goes on a ...

VHS is a thing of the past, and so is the late show and maybe even the whole concept of discovering things. They have to fail first and then get reclaimed by us through random discovery, preferably by popping in a dusty VHS cassette out of curiosity or turning on the late show. The mid-’80s was the height of Spielbergian kids’ adventures, but it was also the height of a particularly baggy and brutal period of slasher flicks, and Cocaine Bear carries whiffs of both. We’re here for the bear and the cocaine, and the film doesn’t skimp on that front either. appear to have set out to make a cult movie on purpose. Like the characters, it wanders around a bit too aimlessly, but by the end you feel like you’ve actually been somewhere. Sometimes the bear sneaks up on our characters like a grim woodland menace. By doing in one of the bigger names in the cast with their opening scene, Banks and writer Jimmy Warden slyly place us in a state of uncertainty over who will make it intact and who will not. Or the two low-level hoodlums, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), sent off by their boss (Ray Liotta) to retrieve the missing cocaine from Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia? Then he buckles in his parachute, puts on his sunglasses, kisses off the empty cockpit, and promptly hits his head and drops lifelessly into the clouds. It also takes a few cues from its time period, not just in the vintage anti-drug PSAs that open the picture but in pace and style. Elizabeth Banks’s action-comedy-thriller is loosely based on a 1985 incident when an American black bear ingested a massive amount of cocaine and was found dead soon thereafter.

The movie seems destined for internet infamy but doesn't live up to the promise of its viral trailer.

The stage is set, then, for a cast of wacky characters to descend on Blood Mountain to retrieve the gear. Following the incident, the bear was stuffed and displayed in the wonderfully named Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington. In the heat of the maulings, the film shifts from comic to disturbing: Intestines are exposed; heads roll. The story goes that a police officer-turned-drug smuggler hurled several duffle bags of cocaine from a plane and then met his own demise while trying to parachute from the craft himself. The film just doesn’t land right, and you can’t help but feel that it was manufactured just to be chopped up for a viral YouTube trailer. And [who wouldn’t want to see](https://twitter.com/SamuelAAdams/status/1628378464431620096?s=20) a bear on a drug-fueled rampage?

Thirteen years after the workplace comedy came to a close, Ken Marino, Martin Starr, Jane Lynch, Megan Mullally and Ryan Hansen attended the premiere for the ...

On Sunday night, Tres Generaciones Tequila hosted the All-Star Weekend Wrap Party in Salt Lake City, featuring a performance by 2 Chainz. Thirty filmmakers were shortlisted across six categories with six winners announced on the night, receiving a range of cash prizes and Sony Digital Imaging equipment. Aniplex of America and Crunchyroll held a L.A. On Saturday, Netflix hosted Poguelandia, an immersive event in Huntington Beach to celebrate the upcoming third season of Outer Banks. In the student filmmaker section, Mateo Salas (Colombia, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia), The Sun of the River won the fiction category and Seonghoon Eric Park (Republic of Korea, Boston University), In Cod We Trust won non-fiction; Pan Tianhong (China Mainland), Homework for Winter Vacation won the Future Format competition. carpet for the season two premiere of their Peacock show on Wednesday. On Thursday, Tribeca co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal and The New Yorker editor David Remnick hosted a screening at the Tribeca Screening Room in NYC for Oscar-nominated short films Stranger at the Gate and Night Ride. on Wednesday, with new castmembers Jennifer Garner, James Marsden, Zoë Chao and Tyrel Jackson Williams. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosted a special private screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary on Wednesday, followed by a Q&A with director Laura Poitras and film subject Nan Goldin. Jabari Banks, Adrian Holmes, Cassandra Freeman, Olly Sholotan, Coco Jones, Akira Akbar, Jimmy Akingbola, Jordan L. Creo announced the winners for the first edition of the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards during a black-tie awards ceremony on Wednesday on the Sony Pictures Studio lot. Here’s a look at this week’s biggest premieres, parties and openings in Los Angeles and New York, including red carpets for Daisy Jones and the Six,

Elizabeth Banks' insane horror-comedy "Cocaine Bear" will have moviegoers asking: What is real?

She said she had “a deep sympathy for the bear” after reading the original reports from 1985. The doctor performed an autopsy on the bear and found that it had three or four grams of cocaine in its blood stream, although the bear could have consumed even more. “The bureau said the bear was found Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.” But that’s not exactly how one would describe the real story of the Cocaine Bear, also known as [Pablo Eskobear](https://variety.com/t/pablo-eskobear/). 11 in Knoxville, Tenn., because he was carrying too heavy a load while parachuting,” read the United Press International report in The Times. [Elizabeth Banks](https://variety.com/t/elizabeth-banks/)’ “ [Cocaine Bear](https://variety.com/t/cocaine-bear/)” is now playing in theaters, bringing with it an onslaught of detached limbs, blood-soaked bodies and gory mayhem.

Since 2015, a Kentucky gift shop has claimed to have the actual “Cocaine Bear,” subject of a new film—though Georgia special agents reveal the truth.

“Our bear was a female,” says Wiley, who was the assistant agent in charge of GBI’s drug enforcement office and tasked with the case. [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/cocaine-bear-true-story-movie-lexington-kentucky-94aadc1c), VanMeter confirmed that Kentucky for Kentucky’s Cocaine Bear claim is a tall tale. (“Nothing says, ‘I’m having a noseful of fun in KY’ like a Cocaine Bear postcard,” advertises the site.) Perhaps most saliently, “Our bear could not have been taxidermy,” she explains. Visited [by] and bringing joy to thousands of people every month, Cocaine Bear is not just a roadside attraction—and soon-to-be biopic antihero—he’s also a city mascot, a heartwarming community builder, and a warning to all the dangers of drug abuse. [Cocaine Bear](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/02/cocaine-bear-premiere-red-carpet), a violent horror-comedy inspired by a bizarre [real-life event](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/02/cocaine-bear-true-story).

Ehrenreich, now 33, made a scrappy home movie that he and other friends showed at the bat mitzvah ceremony in 2009. Spielberg was in attendance at the Los ...

A black bear got into the bag and overdosed on the contents. Spielberg was in attendance at the Los Angeles synagogue and afterwards invited Ehrenreich, who is Jewish, to meet with fellow directing legend Francis Ford Coppola. [beat out several other Jewish actors](https://www.jta.org/2016/01/12/culture/han-solo-a-jew-3-jewish-actors-are-reportedly-on-the-short-list-for-the-role), including Logan Lerman and Dave Franco, to win the part of young Han Solo in the Star Wars spinoff blockbuster “Solo: A Star Wars Story” in 2018.

Maybe a deadly beast hopped up on nose candy is exactly what the climate movement needs.

(Congrats for composting, the planet is still on fire!) In the hyper-dilated eyes of our rampaging ursine, though, drug peddlers and tree-huggers are one and the same. In fact, the literary critic Fredric Jameson has argued that seemingly lowbrow works of “genre fiction”—like detective novels or space operas—are able to introduce their readers to serious topics precisely because they are low-brow. But in an atmosphere in which it is all too easy to feel suffocated by climate anxiety, Elizabeth Banks’ film cuts through our ecological malaise. Though if I learned anything from Cocaine Bear, it is that squaring up with a coked-out Ursus americanus is not a good idea.) My classrooms are mostly populated by bright-eyed Environmental Studies majors who want to save the world, and yet watching films and documentaries about ecological catastrophes often seems to dampen their enthusiasm for activism. What is most interesting about the film is its off-kilter environmentalism. Almost all environmental discourse in America is predicated on the old enlightenment idea that knowledge is power: that if we simply know more about humanity’s impact on the environment, we’ll change our behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, if Cocaine Bear violates our expectations about what environmentalism looks like, it is because American consumers are accustomed to environmental discourse that is characterized by piety and a dash of mournfulness. But the thing about Frank was that if you lined up 20 dudes off the street and were told “one of these guys feeds cocaine to pigeons for a living,” you would have picked Frank 10 out of 10 times. And in a nation populated by hucksters and con artists, it is refreshing to have someone sell you exactly what you were promised. The bear turns the mountain red in pursuit of more cocaine. Of course, there is really only one reason to see Cocaine Bear, and that is because you would like to see what happens when a bear does cocaine.

"You don't know how weird it is to do interviews all day, and people on the news are like, 'So, O'Shea, tell us about this bear on cocaine.

What a country." He's a giant dude from New Zealand dude decked out in black spandex and a bear head," Jackson Jr. "He's a great dude and made my job as an actor way easier. "I heard about it via a tweet," he explained. I'm very pleased with how people are receiving the news that there's a movie about a bear on cocaine," he added. "There are popcorn movies, but then there's cinema, as they say, and I want to be taken seriously in both. " She's a player-coach who knows what it is to be in your shoes and what she wouldn't want a director to tell her. "The online presence of Cocaine Bear is something that, as an actor, as a creator, that's what you want. "When I found out she was directing, it was like, 'She knows what this needs. It has already grossed $2 million in previews and looks set to secure an opening weekend in the region of $15 million. and Cocaine Bear, one of the most talked about films of 2023 so far.

The horror-comedy is based on a real story from 1985, but the director Elizabeth Banks and writer Jimmy Warden gave their furry lead a different ending.

“There’s no absolute way that this bear could have been taxidermied,” the medical examiner told her. He also wore a helmet with a silicone bear snout attached to two telescoping rods and Ping-Pong balls for the eyeline. “To collaborate with somebody who was down to do all that stuff was a dream come true.” Martinez drove to the store that claimed to have the real bear. But because it was high on cocaine, there were opportunities to stretch in little ways to create a superpowered character. “That’s the thing with these movies — you can’t just half-ass it,” she added. Banks got wind and signed him up as Daveed, the trusted fixer for the drug kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta) and former best friend of Syd’s son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich). Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way. But Warden was more intrigued by the bear than the smuggling, and he let his imagination run wild. They’re the real bad guys.” “I just thought, ‘Wow, there is no greater metaphor for the chaos going on in nature,’” she said on a video call. Thornton had parachuted out, weighed down with $14 million worth of the drug along with firearms and survivalist equipment.