Cocaine Bear Is Not Just About a Killer “Coked-Up” Bear, It’s Also an “Underdog Story”

“I got sent a great script,” says Banks when we ask how she followed up the musical comedy Pitch Perfect 2 and the action-adventure Charlie’s Angels with a grisly horror farce for her third turn behind the camera. “I read Jimmy’s script, which was sent to me by my agent. I think they were potentially developing a take with somebody else, but Lord and Miller were about to start their new deal at Universal, where my company is also based. So after I read this, I sent a missive out like, ‘I’d be interested in producing this together if you guys want to join forces.’”

Saying that she loved the “fresh and bold” script, Banks also jokingly argues that Cocaine Bear isn’t too far afield from her previous directorial efforts. “Honestly, I think I kind of make the same movie every time,” she says with a laugh, “just in a different genre. I love comedy. I really like making people laugh and entertaining people… so I made a comedy inside a musical, I made a comedy inside a little action movie, and I made a comedy inside of a horror film.”

After Thornton’s disastrous jump and the bear’s unfortunate meal, the movie takes its wild turn into pure fiction, following a mom (Russell) searching for her troublemaking daughter in the woods; a cranky park ranger (Martindale) who doesn’t want to be disturbed; a good but overmatched cop (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) on the hunt for the coke; and the hapless drug crew (Ehrenreich and Jackson) dispatched by their boss (Liotta) to recover their valuable stash. All soon find themselves at the mercy of an extremely coked-up predator on a rampage, who dispatches a lot of cast members in surprisingly gruesome ways.

“When it’s something fun and comedic, my line’s far away,” says Banks about where she draws the line regarding on-screen gore, which is quite plentiful in Cocaine Bear. “I enjoy a lot of things. I like over-the-top, operatic gore. For me, the references are more Quentin Tarantino than Saw… Watching somebody’s arm break slowly is not interesting to me. I like it done fast and furiously with a lot of blood, basically. Somebody pulling their fingernail off, that kills me.”

She’s got plenty of opportunities to knock people off in Cocaine Bear, with legs ripped off, digestive systems excavated, heads blown apart, and skin shredded to bits. Even though a number of them are killed, Banks notes that she enjoys making movies with large casts of characters and multiple points of view—“I’ve actually, as a director, not attempted a single-POV movie”—and cites films like The Breakfast Club and even Star Wars as the kind of great ensemble films she enjoys.

“I like giving the audience a lot of surrogates in the movie,” she explains about her own predilection for stories with multiple protagonists. “I want people to be able to feel like, ‘Oh, I can see myself in this movie, or I relate to that character in that movie.’ That’s part of the agreement that I’m trying to make as a director with the audience: ‘Come along for this really fun ride. You will laugh, and there’ll be some character, hopefully, that you think is interesting or representative of you.’”