The unbelievable true story behind film about a bear who ate 70lbs of cocaine

Ever since the trailer for Cocaine Bear dropped, movie fans have been going wild about the film.

And now that it is out in cinemas, fans have got a taste of the film that is based on an unbelievable true story.

Since its recently release, Cocaine Bear has beat all expectations, with it earning an impressive $23 million from box office in its opening weekend in the US.

With a certainly interesting name, what exactly is Cocaine Bear about?

Well, an official synopsis for the film reads: "An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converge in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine."

Proving truth is often stranger than fiction, director Elizabeth Banks' upcoming comedy horror is based on the real-life case of a drug-smuggling plot gone wrong.

At the centre of the bust was Andrew Thornton, a former narcotics officer and lawyer who became the head member of a drug-smuggling ring in Kentucky known as 'The Company'.

Universal Pictures

That side of the story alone is enough to be the basis of a film - but things took an even more outrageous turn in 1985.

While on a drugs run from Colombia, Thornton dumped packages of the Class A near Blairsville in Georgia before jumping from an auto-piloted plane.

His body was later discovered in the driveway of a residential home in Knoxville, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations suggesting he may have hit his head on the aircraft tail and failed to open his parachute before plunging to the ground.

When authorities attended the scene, they discovered Thornton to be wearing a bulletproof vest and Gucci loafers.

He also had night vision goggles, a wad of cash, knives, two pistols and, let's not forget, a duffel bag filled with millions of dollars' worth of cocaine.

But this wouldn't be the only drugs-stuffed duffel bag in this story.

Kentucky by Kentucky

You see, three months later, after tracking the flightpath of Thornton's plane, officers discovered the now infamous 175-pound black bear dead in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

A number of empty packets were scattered around the animal, and they soon realised it had ingested one of the ten duffel bags containing the contraband.

Perhaps not the biggest surprise is that the bear had actually eaten a staggering 70 pounds of cocaine and had overdosed.

Unlike the film, in which the bear goes on a murderous rampage, it sounds like it suffered a truly horrific and pretty instant death.

The medical examiner who looked inside the bear found that it had nearly everything under the sun wrong with it.

"Cerebral haemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it," the medical examiner said.

In real life, the cocaine bear was stuffed and can be seen at the Kentucky For Kentucky store in Lexington.

You really have to see it to believe it, and Cocaine Bear is showing in cinemas now.