Elizabeth Banks would love to bring 'Cocaine Bear' back to the big screen for a sequel.
The actress-turned-director stepped behind the camera to take charge of the creature feature - which follows the path of a black bear on a drug-fuelled rampage in a Georgia forest - and she had so much fun making the movie she has confessed she'd love to return for a follow-up.
She told Rolling Stone: "I loved how subversive, crazy, silly and funny it was. I loved surprising people with the cast ... We had a lot [of] fun, and if I got the opportunity to surprise the audience and delight myself again, I would take it."
Elizabeth added of the movie: "I’ve been very fortunate to work across a lot of genres and things that appeal to me. 'Cocaine Bear' also came to me during the pandemic. We were all locked away, and I loved the sense of fun inside of it. It was what I wanted to see. And it had this message about mankind’s culpability in nature’s demise. It spoke to me on a lot of levels."
The movie is inspired by the true story of an American black bear that ingested a duffel bag full of cocaine dropped by drug smugglers in 1985 and the crew wanted the animal – which was designed by Peter Jackson's Weta FX company – to look as a realistic as possible. Producer Chris Miller told The Hollywood Reporter: "It was very important to us and very important to Elizabeth to make sure that you really believe the bear, because if you didn't then the whole movie is pointless. "They studied actual crazy things that bears do, bear movements and stuff, and then we goosed it a little bit." Elizabeth previously acknowledged that she was putting her career at risk by making the bizarre movie. She explained: "'Cocaine Bear' is a ginormous risk. This could be a career ender for me."
