Did Cocaine Bear Flop at the Box Office?

By Charlie Ridgely

In a world where superhero movies regularly earn hundreds of millions of dollars in their opening weekends, it's easy for some people to look at mid-budget theatrical releases and consider them to be failures. Universal's Cocaine Bear appears to be the latest victim of this misunderstanding, after debuting to the tune of $23 million here in North America last weekend. Sure, that's a significantly smaller total than any of Marvel's opening weekends over the last decade, but Elizabeth Banks' R-rated horror comedy is far from a flop. In fact, Cocaine Bear looks to be yet another early win for Universal in 2023.

Ahead of its debut, most box office projections estimated an opening weekend around $15 million for Cocaine Bear. The more optimistic projections thought it might climb to $17 million. The zany animal slasher (which is actually based on a true story) soared past all of those estimates and is quickly turning a profit for Universal.

Cocaine Bear seemed to have a lot stacked against it from the jump. R-rated movies have a harder time at the box office than PG-13 fare. Genre mashups often have difficulty marketing to different audiences. Animal attack movies almost always yield modest results. However, the catchy title and premise, along with solid trailers and good word-of-mouth, propelled Cocaine Bear to success.

With an estimated budget somewhere around $30 million, Cocaine Bear is already on the verge of breaking even at the box office. After another week, it will likely start earning money for Universal, following in the footsteps of M3gan. 

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Animal attack films don't typically have this kind of box office success. Just last year, Universal released the Idris Elba-led Beast in theaters and it brought home a modest $11.5 million in its first weekend, less than half of Cocaine Bear's opening. Paramount's Crawl, a film about a deadly alligator, earned around $12 million in its debut.

It's easy to see why some may look at Cocaine Bear as less than a success, seeing as how it finished second place at the domestic box office to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is making headlines for its record drop in its sophomore week. But given its small budget and stiff competition, Cocaine Bear is nothing short of an absolute win. 

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