Shortly after debuting the first teaser poster and synopsis for the movie, Universal Pictures has finally revealed the first trailer for the upcoming Cocaine Bear, from director Elizabeth Banks. And so far, it looks like it will live up to its premise. Check it out:
Regardless of how the movie pans out, we’re in for one hell of a marketing campaign. The first logline revealed for the movie simply read “Don’t coke the bear”. The social media post with the trailer today included: “I’m the bear who ate the cocaine. This is my story.”
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Here is the official synopsis for the movie:
Cocaine Bear Official Synopsis
“Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood.”
Who is in Cocaine Bear?
The cast of the movie includes Keri Russell (The Americans, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (BlacKkKlansman), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Hannah Hoekstra (2019’s Charlie’s Angels) and Aaron Holliday (Sharp Objects), Margo Martindale (The Americans) and Ray Liotta (Goodfellas). This is one of the final projects that Ray Liotta was involved in before he passed away in May 2022.
Cocaine Bear was directed by Elizabeth Banks, who transitioned from acting into directing feature films with Pitch Perfect 2 and then 2019’s Charlie’s Angels. She is also a producer on the movie, along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the minds behind The LEGO Movie, both 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, as well as the producers behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its two upcoming sequels. Jimmy Warden, who wrote Baby Sitter: Killer Queen, penned the script.
Overall Thoughts On The Cocaine Bear Trailer
The Cocaine Bear trailer definitely surprised me a bit, as it was more comedy-oriented than I initially anticipated, even if the marketing had been quite on-the-nose so far. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, because it did manage to make me crack up a couple of times. So as long as I have a good time watching it, pretty much everything else is forgiven. The question now becomes whether or not Elizabeth Banks and her team can make a movie that lives up to this killer premise.
Hopefully the cast has more interactions than we’ve seen in the trailer. It is quite a stellar ensemble, and I would like for them to have a blast together. The trailer made it look like the stories of the people getting involved will be slightly disconnected from each other.
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But these are just minor pet peeves. I am very much looking forward to the movie, and I’m very glad that it’s only less than three months away. I like the fact that, after COVID, studios have gone back to more time-sensitive marketing campaigns, and are revealing trailers quite close to the actual release. This way, we don’t have to wait six months to see the final film, and it’s just gonna be an all-killer, no-filler promotion.
The timing of the Cocaine Bear release is also quite fitting, as it’s around the same time as when the first Deadpool movie was released, and it’s definitely targeting the same demographic. Everything from the marketing campaign and release strategy of the movie seems to be working for now, so it will be a matter of whether the movie is any good or not.
Cocaine Bear will be released in theaters on Feb. 24, 2023. What did you think of the trailer? Did it raise your anticipation level for the movie? Had you heard about it before? Let us know in the comments and on our social media!
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