‘Cocaine Bear,' Ray Liotta’s Final Movie, Opens In Theaters Friday

ACROSS AMERICA — “Cocaine Bear,” actor Ray Liotta’s final movie based on a story that is almost too absurd to be believed, opens Friday in movie theaters nationwide. And, if the millions of views of its trailer are an indication, the film could strike a blow against the business-as-usual more intellectual Hollywood films that typically make it to movie theaters.

The story that inspired “Cocaine Bear” sounds like something produced from a drug-induced haze.

In 1987, investigators in Blue Ridge, Georgia, searching for cocaine dropped by an airborne smuggler “found a ripped-up shipment of the sweet-smelling powder and the remains of a bear that apparently died of a multi-million-dollar high,” The Associated Press reported at the time.

Further investigation revealed the parachutist, a former Kentucky narcotics investigator, had fallen to his death in a back yard in Knoxiville, Tennessee, and his unmanned aircrafted crashed into a mountain in North Carolina.

• Read Our Earlier Story: Ray Liotta ‘Cocaine Bear’ Movie: Bear OD’d On Coke That Fell From Sky

Screenwriter Jimmy Warden retrieved long-forgotten news stories about the bear and smuggler’s deaths, weaving the truth into the “Cocaine Bear” script he delivered to producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

“When the movie’s pitched, you hear the word ‘cocaine,’ you’re like I’m not sure what to think of this,” Lord told the AP. “Then when you hear the word ‘bear,’ you’re like: ‘I’m all in.’ ”

The trailer for Elizabeth Banks’ R-rated film — very, very loosely based on the real story — has been viewed more than 25 million times.

“Hopefully, the film lives up to the title,” Banks told the AP. “That was the goal.”

The film imagines what may have happened to the bear — “Cokie” if it hadn’t died, sending it on a cocaine-fueled rampage through a national forest terrorizing park rangers, campers and drug dealers looking for their lost cache.

While few comedies have the blockbuster power of intellectual films, “Cocaine Bear” could have enough audacity and boldness to reverse the trend, according to Lord.

“You have to demonstrate theatricality to get the greenlight. It just means you have to swing the bat a little harder,” he said. “In this world that’s increasingly mechanized, things that don’t feel mechanized have really special value.”

Besides Liotta, who plays a drug kingpin, the cast includes Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson

The Associated Press contributed reporting. Read the full story.