First trailer for Cocaine Bear film based on a true story has been released

The first trailer for Cocaine Bear has dropped.

The movie tells the bizarre story of a bear in the US that consumed 70lbs of cocaine, back in 1985.

Check out the trailer here:

The black comedy thriller is inspired by unbelievable events that arose in Kentucky - though the premise of the film takes the madness much further.

It's directed by Hunger Games star Elizabeth Banks, and stars Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju, Kahyun Kim, Christian Convery, Brooklynn Prince and the late Ray Liotta, in one of his last roles before his death in May.

The synopsis reads: "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 fuelled rampage for more blow … and blood."

In case it isn't clear, the predator ingesting a staggering amount of cocaine is the part that is true - the fuelled rampage for more blow is the flight of fancy.

The bear which inspired this movie was found by investigators back in 1985, lying next to a duffel bag.

The duffel bag had been filled with more than 70 pounds (weight, not price) of the Class A drug before it was thrown from drug smuggler Andrew Thornton's plane.

But when the contraband - which was worth around $15 million (£10.7m) - was finally found, all that remained was 40 empty packets scattered around the animal.

A medical examiner, who looked inside the bear, said: "Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn't a mammal on the planet that could survive that."

So there was no rampaging for that bear, I'm afraid.

Universal Pictures

According to The Independent, Thornton was a former lawyer and narcotics police officer, but he'd been on a cocaine smuggling run in a Cessna aircraft from Colombia and was dropping packages off in northern Georgia.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations claimed that Thornton fell to his death when he jumped out of the plane and 'hit his head on the tail of the aircraft' and failed to open his parachute.

The 40-year-old was found in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee, wearing night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest and Gucci loafers. He also had $4,500 in cash on him, as well as guns, knives and the keys to a plane.

Police subsequently found nine duffel bags of cocaine - the 10th duffel bag was found with the bear in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

The bear is now stuffed and can be seen at the Kentucky For Kentucky store in Lexington (which is in Kentucky, unsurprisingly).

Oh, and it's been dubbed 'Pablo Eskobear'.

The film will be released on 24 February 2023 - so get that date in your diary.