Accidents happen! Elizabeth Banks tripped on stage at the Oscars as she walked on stage to present the award for Best Visual Effects.
26.02.2023 - 21:25 / deadline.com
“‘Nobody likes to watch people getting eaten by lions”
Apparently this was the response by the late Sumner Redstone during his National Amusement exhibition days after he saw a screening of the 1981 Tom Skerritt lion movie, Savage Harvest, relayed to me by an exhibition source who overheard him.
As funny as Redstone’s reaction was, it’s an axiom that has rung true: Certain animal-eat-people movies just don’t work. Moviegoers chomp on sharks movies like Jaws and Meg, but other treacherous animal movies aren’t prime to high openings, i.e. Paramount’s alligator movie Crawl ($12M, $39M final domestic) and more recently Universal with its Idris Elba title Beast ($11.5M opening, final US $31.8M) — which was a lion move.
However, this weekend Universal proved that everybody likes to watch people get eaten by bears as their R-rated Elizabeth Banks directed Cocaine Bear opened to $23M.
How did Universal beat the odds and make this work? Multi-genre movies, and this one being a horror comedy, are typically feathered fish, meaning that they’re marketing nightmares for the studio.
But for Universal, it didn’t get better than having a sticky title like Cocaine Bear. The title was a gift –never mind the pitch– one which moviegoers couldn’t shake off.
Cocaine Bear is another low budget win (production cost in the $30M range) for Universal after Atomic Monster/Blumhouse’s M3GAN ($30.4M opening, $94.5M domestic) back in January and the studio’s team up with 87North on Violent Night ($13.4M opening, $49.8M) in the early December corridor. Cocaine Bear also repped a grand shiny win for low budget original theatrical releases at the box office this weekend, in addition to Lionsgate’s overperforming faith-based title Jesus Revolution
Accidents happen! Elizabeth Banks tripped on stage at the Oscars as she walked on stage to present the award for Best Visual Effects.
and without visual effects, this is what the bear would look like," she continued. The bear danced behind her and she told the character, «Stop it. No director wants to deal with this, stop this.
Roy Trakin Depeche Mode, the pioneering ‘80s U.K. technopop band, has long had a strong following in Los Angeles — thanks to their exposure on local alternative stalwart KROQ — and now they’re proving a favorite of film and TV creative executives. The group, consisting of co-founders Martin Gore and vocalist Dave Gahan after the death of keyboardist Andrew Fletcher in May 2022, is on a roll following its 2020 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where they were introduced by Charlize Theron, who called them “the soundtrack of my life.” Depeche Mode’s new Mute/Columbia Records album, “Memento Mori,” comes out March 24, their first since 2017’s “Spirit” and 15th overall, which will be followed by a year-long tour that launches March 23 in Sacramento and includes a show at L.A.’s Kia Forum on March 28 and four concluding area shows in December, two apiece at Kia and Crypto.com Arena.
EXCLUSIVE: Fox is moving forward with The Flintstones spinoff series Bedrock.
Cocaine Bear” has been getting rave reviews, raking in $8.65 million on its opening night, according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo — but not everyone is so fond of the movie.Some “woke” viewers complained the new film is “encouraging drug use” and “not suitable for kids.”The movie — which is rated R for for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout — is loosely based on a true story. In 1985, a bear was found dead in the Georgia woods after consuming a drug smuggler’s stash of cocaine that was dropped from a plane. “Cocaine Bear” shows the black bear surviving and becoming an addict willing to kill anyone who gets in her way. It follows an ensemble of locals, tourists, criminals and police offers who come together to try to survive the bear’s drug-fueled frenzy.One controversial scene in the movie shows 12-year-olds doing cocaine, which director Elizabeth Banks previously defended.
according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo.The comedy, which is directed by Elizabeth Banks, whom The Post said, “keeps the powder gags fresh throughout,” is loosely based on a true story of a black bear in Georgia that ate millions of dollars worth of lost cocaine. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” which was in first place last week, creeped to second with an $8.3 million-dollar take.The plummet in sales for the superhero flick, which cost around $200 million to make, marks the worst-ever second-week drop for a Marvel film, according to Deadline.Remaining in third was “Avatar: The Way of Water” with $1.1 million in sales.
“Cocaine Bear” is barreling into theatres in a big way.
a briliant binge of comedy horror.” Here’s what you need to know about the movie, which is directed by Elizabeth Banks and stars Keri Russell, Ray Liotta and O’Shea Jackson Jr.It was released on Friday, Feb. 24 by Universal Pictures.Like other Universal, DreamWorks, Illumination, and Focus Films, it will stream exclusively on Peacock within four months of its theatrical debut.
“Cocaine Bear” is barreling into theatres in a big way.
Arguably an early contender for the wildest movie of 2023, Elizabeth Banks‘ “Cocaine Bear” is based on the true story of a 175-pound Black Bear who overdosed on cocaine after ingesting the drug in 1985. While the bear did not kill anyone and died shortly after consuming cocaine, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden fictionalize a story where the bear goes on a killing spree while massively high on cocaine.
Stretching the phrase “inspired by true events” to its bare limits, Cocaine Bear (★★★☆☆) takes off from the stranger-than-fiction real-life tale of a Kentucky drug runner who, in 1985, dumped bundles of cocaine from a plane over Georgia, then perished trying to parachute after the drugs, a large, expensive portion of which were found and somehow consumed by a 500-lb. black bear deep in the Georgia woods.Anyone interested in the dead-serious facts of the case can grab a copy of Sally Denton’s comprehensive chronicle The Bluegrass Conspiracy, originally published in 1990.This movie, on the other hand, takes a bold leap off that plane with Thornton’s duffel bags full of brown paper-wrapped bricks of blow, and never looks back.Directed by Pitch Perfect mogul Elizabeth Banks, and scripted by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear leaves no gruesome gag unturned, no outrageous one-liner untold, serving up the sort of anything-goes big-screen comedy that comes along rarely.Mid-rampage, the coke-fueled bear snorts a line off someone’s severed leg.
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The last time a movie was marketed with a this-sounds-so-wretchedly-over-the-top-not-to-mention-insane-it-could-almost-be-fun low/high concept, the results, to put it kindly, were mixed. “Snakes on a Plane,” which sounded like a title that Don Simpson scrawled in white powder on a table at 4:00 a.m., was a movie that wore its brain-deadness on both lapels. But 17 years ago, that title inspired mountains of online chatter, to the point that the filmmakers incorporated bits and pieces of the obsessive fan gabble into the movie, most famously the Samuel L. Jackson line, “I have had it with these mothefuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin‘ plane!” The result was that “Snakes on a Plane” felt like the first piece of brazen Hollywood schlock that was crowdsourced. The audience went in thinking: It may be trash, but it’s our trash.
“A bear did COCAINE!” screams a frazzled Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), trying to explain a patently absurd concept like a rational person – and exposing the vast capacity for humor that lies between the two. “Cocaine Bear,” a film that really puts the high in high-concept comedy, contains promise and peril in its premise.
The title says it all. Just like Snakes On A Plane was about just that, the new horror comedy Cocaine Bear is about a 500 pound bear on a jihad after coming upon a ton of cocaine dropped into rural Georgia on a drug run gone wrong. The bear ingests the coke and soon you have a beast roaring out of control devouring whatever human comes on to his path. It is all not to be taken seriously, but fortunately director Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels, Pitch Perfect 2) is smart enough to give audiences hungry for a ‘Jaws’ in the wilderness, some nice scares mixed in with the laughs plus a bit more bang for their buck than just a marketable title.
director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.Running time: 95 minutes. Rated R (bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout.) In theaters.The hysterical film is based on a true story in the loosest possible sense.
In an interview with the New York Times last September, actor-filmmaker Elizabeth Banks shared a piece of career advice from Lorne Michaels that’s been of enduring value to her.
Cocaine Bear is a dark action-comedy film set in a small town in Georgia.READ MOREThe synopsis reads: “After ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine, a 500 lb American black bear goes on a killing rampage in a small town of Georgia where a group of locals and tourists must join forces to survive the attack.”Directed and co-produced by Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear features an ensemble cast that includes Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Margo Martindale, and Ray Liotta in one of his final performances before his death in 2022.Oh, absolutely. According to the official website, Cocaine Bear is “inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it.”Dubbed Pablo Eskobear (after “the king of cocaine” Pablo Escobar), the real life bear was a 150lb American black bear who was discovered on a hillside in Fannin County, Georgia next to a duffel bag and 40 half-consumed packs of cocaine.Well, rather than heading out “on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow and blood,” Pablo Eskobear overdosed on cocaine and was found dead on the scene.According to the Washington Post, an autopsy found the bear had around three to four grams of the drug in its blood stream. The narcotics investigators who made the discovery believe the drugs were ditched months earlier by trafficker Andrew Carter Thornton II who had planned to return.However, Thornton died after falling out of a plane in September 1985.
Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor “Cocaine Bear” director Elizabeth Banks is worried about her mother seeing the horror comedy when it opens on Friday. “I’m going to be honest with you, no one knows what to make of it when I tell them about it,” Banks told Variety at the movie’s premiere Tuesday night at Regal LA Live. “My poor mother is the least informed. She’s going to go with my aunts and they’re going to lose their minds. I told her she’s going to be mad. She will laugh and she’s going to love Margo Martindale and Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the dog. Not enough people talk about the dog, Rosette. She’ll love those parts, but she’ll close her eyes for a lot of it.”
Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer When Jimmy Warden was a kid growing up in Chicago, he wound up watching “a lot” of horror movies when he was, he says, “far too young.” “I became used to seeing people get their guts eaten or torn out of their bodies, stuff like that,” he says over Zoom with a wry chuckle. “So that’s where a lot of my taste is right now.” Warden’s sensibility is on robust display in his screenplay for “Cocaine Bear,” the R-rated action-comedy, directed by Elizabeth Banks, that is loosely based on the true story of a black bear who died after ingesting a mountain of cocaine in 1985 from a botched drug smuggling operation. Warden stumbled on the account in the mid-2010s while scrolling through Twitter, “not doing work that I should have been doing,” and instantly realized that “there was something there.”