Cocaine Bear and other intoxicated critters: the ‘true-ish’ story behind US box-office hit

The ‘horror-comedy’ took $23m on its opening weekend despite being panned by critics

Cocaine Bear
‘An entire film about a bear that goes on a mad rampage after ingesting a load of cocaine’
(Image credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)

Offbeat movie Cocaine Bear, which follows an American black bear’s cocaine-fuelled rampage, has proved to be an unexpected hit at box offices across the US.

“Universal’s horror-comedy… blew past box office projections”, said Variety, earning an impressive $23m from 3,534 North American cinemas on its opening weekend, and ranked second at the global box office, behind only Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

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 Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.