Upcoming film Cocaine Bear will be produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller and just recently, we found out that actor Elizabeth Banks will be the one to direct. All three are big names in the industry with Phil Lord and Chris Miller having collaborated on films like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and Banks having done films such as The Hunger Games (2012) and Charlie’s Angels (2019).
Details about the project so far:
Banks will be working on Cocaine Bear alongside Lord and Miller for Universal Studios and this thriller film is written by Jimmy Warden (The Roommate, 2011). This film is not the only project Banks is working on for Universal. She currently has two more roles lined up for her- female lead in the upcoming The Invisible Man and Ms Frizzle in The Magic School Bus. Cocaine Bear is based on a true reporting from the year 1985 and will follow a black bear that accidentally consumes more than 70 pounds of cocaine left unattended at the New York airport. The film will not just be another crime comedy, but a “character-driven thriller”, which means that along with being packed with suspense, we will also get to explore the depth of the characters in the film (maybe even the 175-pound bear?).
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The real story that the film is based on:
A bizarre incident occurred at the New York airport in 1985 when Andrew Thornton, who was a Narcotics officer turned smuggler, was trying to escape Columbia with a huge duffel bag full of cocaine. In order to avoid getting caught, he dropped the bag from the aeroplane and it landed in Chattahoochee National Forest where a bear managed to get its hands on it. Named as history’s biggest overdose, the dead bear was stuffed and even named Pablo EskoBear for a grotesque tourist attraction.
