Cocaine Bear Gets Home Video Release Date

Cocaine Bear is headed to home release. On Tuesday, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment announced the digital and home release dates for Cocaine Bear and they’re coming up sooner than you think. The Elizabeth Banks directed film will be released on digital on April 14th and will then be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 18th. Both the digital and home medial releases will feature an alternate ending, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and more in terms of the extra features. You can check out a full listing of those extra features on the “Maximum Rampage Edition” of the film for yourself below.

‘MAXIMUM RAMPAGE EDITION’ EXCLUSIVE BONUS FEATURES TO OWN ON DIGITAL, BLU-RAY & DVD: 

1   Alternate Ending 

2   Deleted & Extended Scenes

3   Gag Reel

4   All Roads Lead to Cokey: The Making of COCAINE BEAR – Meet the hilarious ensemble brought together to bring the movie of what is soon to be the world’s most famous bear to life.

5   UnBEARable Bloodbath: Dissecting the Kills – From rigging to special effects makeup, to some of the actors doing their own stunts, we’ll get a bears-eye view into some of COCAINE BEAR‘s hilarious and gory kill scenes.

6   Doing Lines – Cast and filmmakers read lines from the script to COCAINE BEAR, which was a work of art unto itself.

7   Feature Commentary with Director/Producer Elizabeth Banks and Producer Max Handelman

Who Stars in Cocaine Bear?

Cocaine Bear stars Keri Russell (The Americans), Emmy-winner Margo Martindale (The Americans), Emmy-winner Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Kahyun Kim (American Gods), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project) and newcomer Scott Seiss.

Directed by Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels, Pitch Perfect 2) from a screenplay by Jimmy Warden (The Babysitter: Killer Queen), Cocaine Bear is produced by Oscar® winners Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. The Machines) and Aditya Sood (The Martian) for Lord Miller, by Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman (Pitch Perfect franchise) for Brownstone Productions, and by Brian Duffield (Spontaneous). Robin Fisichella (Ma) will executive produce. 

So, Cocaine Bear is based on a true story?

Back in 1985, “Cokey the Bear” ingested an extreme amount of cocaine after a drug runner’s plane crashed. Andrew C. Thornton II was a former narcotics officer and convicted drug smuggler, who dumped a duffel bag of cocaine out of his plane because his plane was too heavy. Thornton intended to recover the bag himself, jumping out of the plane with a parachute, but the parachute was faulty, and Thornton died. Three months later, a 175-pound black bear was found dead in Georgia alongside 40 opened plastic containers of cocaine. The tale became popular in the region, and the animal itself was taxidermied and is still displayed at the Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, Kentucky, where you can also buy “Cokey the Bear” merch. Naturally, the movie is taking a lot of liberties. 

“I felt a lot of sympathy for the bear,” Banks told EW about the real-life Cocaine Bear. “Like, wow, this bear – which, in real life, ended up dead after eating all this coke – ended up being sort of collateral damage in this War on Drugs. And I just thought, ‘Well, then this movie can be a revenge story for the bear.’ And it just gave me a point of view and a purpose for making it. Like, there’s a real message here: ‘We should not f*ck with nature, nature will win.’”

She added in her interview with Variety, “I really felt like this is so fucked up that this bear got dragged into this drug run gone bad and ends up dead … I felt like this movie could be that bear’s revenge story.”

Cocaine Bear arrive son digital on April 14th and on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 18th.