Elizabeth Banks’ latest directorial outing Cocaine Bear will barrel into cinemas on February 24th, 2023, it has been announced.

With a star-studded cast that includes Keri Russell (The Americans, Antlers), Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones, The Witcher), Kahyun Kim, Christian Convery, Brooklynn Prince, and Scott Seiss, Cocaine Bear is a thriller inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine stash, and the black bear that found it.

The film follows an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens as they converge on a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has chomped down on a shocking volume of the white powder and goes on a coked-up rampage seeking more blow and blood.

In real life, the bear in question was trimmer, weighing in at a mere 175 pounds. It died sometime around December 23rd, 1985 in a northern Georgia forest and was found among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine, which were dropped from a plane piloted by convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton. A medical examiner determined the black bear had ingested nothing short of 75 pounds (34 kilos!) of coke.

Banks directs from a screenplay by Jimmy Warden. The film was initially going to be co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, but the project changed hands in early 2021.

Cocaine Bear releases in cinemas February 24th 2023.