Universal announced on Monday that Elizabeth Banks is directingCocaine Bear, based on a true story of a black bear who consumed a duffel bag of cocaine. PerDeadline, the movie will be hitting theaters on August 06, 2025.
Written by Jimmy Warden, the film will feature an ensemble cast includingKeri Russell (The Americans), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Ray Liotta (Field of Dreams), and is described as a “character-driven thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985.” Also starring inCocaine Bearare Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Margo Martindale (BoJack Horseman), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Brooklyn Prince (Home Before Dark), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Kahyun Kim, and newcomer Scott Seiss.
In addition to directing, Elizabeth Banks is also producingCocaine Bear. ThePitch Perfectactress, who made her directorial film debut withPitch Perfect 2, whose $69 million gross opening weekend set an opening weekend record for a first time director, founded a production company with her husband Max Handelman in 2002, Brownstone Productions. Handelman is producing the movie, along with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who directedThe Lego Movie, and Aditya Sood for Lord Miller Productions, and Brian Duffield.
Cocaine Bear is Based on a True Story
Cocaine Bearis inspired by a true story: the year was 1985; the state was Georgia; and the victim was an innocent 175 pound black bear that accidentally found a duffel bag that once contained 70 pounds of cocaine and ingested it. The cocaine was worth $15 million. When the cops arrived at the scene, they found 40 empty drug baggies near the dead animal’s body —the cause of death was unmistakably an overdose.
The duffel bag fell out of the plane of drug smuggler Andrew Thornton, who was the son of wealthy Kentucky horse breeders. According toTheIndependent, who reported that Georgia Bureau of Investigations discovered that Thornton, “a former lawyer and narcotics police officer,” had been on a cocaine-smuggling run when he fell to his death trying to jump out of his airplane and “hit his head on the tail of the aircraft." He was found wearing night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, and Gucci loafers, and with $4,500 in cash on him, several knives, two guns, and a key to the plane.
Authorities found the dead bear three months after Thornton’s death. “Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that,” the medical examiner who performed the bear’s necropsy said. “Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it.”
However, Banks has described the film as a thriller, so it is likely that she will take some creative liberties with theCocaine Bearstory. Since the real “cocaine bear” died before the authorities found the mammal, no one knows what transpired before the overdose (although the bear probably overdosed quickly with that much cocaine in the mammal’s system).
