A bear goes on a drug-fuelled rampage in the hilarious first trailer for one of our most highly-anticipated flicks of 2023 (check out our Previewphoria issue, on stands now!), Universal Pictures’ dark comedy Cocaine Bear, directed by Elizabeth Banks.

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. (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones, The Witcher), and the late Ray Liotta in one of his final roles, 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.

Banks counts many classic creature-feature flicks among her inspirations, reports THR, pointing to such films as Jaws and Stand by Me. “I love horror, and I love gore, and I love horror-comedy, and I love Sam Raimi, and I love John Carpenter,” Banks said. “This takes place in 1985, so I felt like this was a real opportunity to create an homage to some of those kinds of films, but to do something unique tonally because it is also a character piece.”

Cocaine Bear releases in cinemas from February 24th, 2023. Check out the trailer below: