Elizabeth Banks says horror-comedy Cocaine Bear is 'such a fun chapter in that bear's story'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Whether she's chronicling an ailing a capella group in Pitch Perfect 2 or a trio of spies tasked with taking out a corporate overlord in Charlie's Angels, Elizabeth Banks has proven — as a writer, producer, and director — that she loves a good underdog story. The characters in her next film, however, might just be her unluckiest ones yet, facing off against a hulking American black bear that is viciously (and gloriously) high on cocaine.
Directed by Banks, the upcoming horror-comedy Cocaine Bear is based on the unbelievably true story of an actual bear that ingested millions of dollars worth of cocaine after a failed drug smuggling operation caused packages of it to crash-land into a Georgia forest in 1985. While the real bear died from an overdose, its fictional furry counterpart embarks on a hunt for more drugs and is ready to tear through anything and anyone that gets in its way.
With a premise like that, it's easy to see why the script, penned by Jimmy Warden, instantly caught the 48-year-old Banks' attention. "I knew when I read the script that I had the ability to make something truly unique," she tells EW, noting that it was such a "fun chapter in that bear's story" to explore.
As she dug deeper into the lore surrounding the animal, whose taxidermied hide now resides in the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, Banks kept coming back to one thing. "I felt a lot of sympathy for the bear," she says. "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--- with nature, nature will win."
The bear, aptly nicknamed Cokey, was brought to life onscreen digitally by Wētā FX, and sometimes on set by a bear performer named Allan Henry, who previously trained under Andy Serkis. "He knew really well how to walk as a quadruped using prosthetics," Banks says. "It's a whole skill set. There are few performers in the world who really specialize in this."
The result is a picture-perfect bear that roars, snorts drugs off slashed body parts, and drags unsuspecting hikers into the underbrush with zero remorse. In fact, in the pantheon of onscreen bears, Banks wagers that Cokey is by far the most vicious yet, declaring, "Cokey outmatches The Revenant bear every time out."
Universal Pictures Cokey snorts cocaine.
Going toe-to-toe against Cokey are a gaggle of tourists, law enforcement officers, and a concerned mother (Keri Russell) searching for her daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and friend (Christian Convery). At the same time, drug pushers Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) are tasked with recovering the lost product by Eddie's dad, played by Ray Liotta in his final onscreen performance.
"No matter who you are in life, even if you're Henry Hill [Liotta's character in Goodfellas], if you meet a bear that's high on cocaine, you are the underdog in that situation," Banks jokes. "And that's what provided a lot of the comedic engine, you know? These are just people who aren't prepared or have the capacity to deal with a bear who's high on coke."
Even with its absurdly high stakes, it was important to Banks that Cocaine Bear still be grounded in a sense of reality — especially when it came to its carnage. "We looked at a lot of bear attack photos and wounds, people who had been attacked, marred, killed, some dark stuff," she says. "[It was] a dark journey that we went on to sort of get to like, Okay, so if that's the baseline, then how do we make it a little more fun?"
She cites the 1986 classic Stand by Me as one her "very varied" references for the film, especially since it deals with a group of children who wander into the woods and have "to deal with something really adult before they're ready." By the same token, parenting is also one of the film's biggest themes.
Pat Redmond/Universal Elizabeth Banks speaking to Keri Russell on the set of 'Cocaine Bear.'
"Alden's character, Eddie, is struggling with being in the family business and wants out and his father doesn't want to let him go," Banks says. "His best friend, Daveed, who is played by O'Shea Jackson Jr., is the surrogate son that Ray Liotta always wanted — that Eddie never lived up to — and so they have a very contentious relationship even though they've been working together and been best friends since high school. That, to me, is the meat of what we did, and then the bear is the fun."
"Everybody's going through something," she adds. "It almost feels like a Coen Brothers movie with a big horror element with the bear."
The film is a delightfully deadly twist for Banks, one she hopes will both "entertain and surprise."
"I tend to hide comedies inside of other genres," she offers. "Pitch Perfect is a comedy inside of a musical. Charlie's Angels is a comedy inside of an action vehicle. This is a comedy inside of a horror movie. I love making people laugh. I love entertaining audiences. I think laughing and screaming and squirming are all valid emotions in the movie theater, and I know that this movie delivers on that level."
Cocaine Bear lines up in theaters on February 24, 2023. See our exclusive images above.
Related content:
