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True Story About Bear Accidentally Consuming 70lbs Of Cocaine Is Being Made Into A Film

True Story About Bear Accidentally Consuming 70lbs Of Cocaine Is Being Made Into A Film

Elizabeth Banks is going to direct the film

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

Some of the best movies are based on true stories. Think Schindler's List, American Sniper and The Pianist to name a few.

Well, now there's a new one that can be added to the mix - a film is being made based on a true story about a bear that accidentally ate 70 pounds of cocaine. It'll be called Cocaine Bear - catchy, right?

Presumably not the bear in question.
PA

Although we don't know many details about the film, we do know that Elizabeth Banks (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) will be directing the flick, while filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller will be producing - and it will be their first deal with Universal Pictures.

According to reports, the film is a 'character-driven thriller inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985'.

According to Variety, the script for Cocaine Bear comes from Jimmy Warden (The Babysitter, The Roommate), but everything else is being kept under wraps... or they simply haven't gotten that far just yet. Who knows.

Elizabeth Banks.
PA

Luckily, we do know more about this 175 pound infamous black bear. It was found by investigators back in 1985, lying next to a duffel bag.

The duffel bag had been filled with more than 70 pounds (weight, not price) of the Class A drug before it was thrown from drug smuggler Andrew Thornton's plane.

But when the contraband - which was worth around $15 million (£10.7m) - was finally found, all that remained was 40 empty packets scattered around the animal.

A medical examiner, who looked inside the bear, said: "Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn't a mammal on the planet that could survive that."

According to The Independent, Thornton was a former lawyer and narcotics police officer, but he'd been on a cocaine smuggling run in a Cessna aircraft from Colombia and was dropping packages off in northern Georgia.

Picture of a Cessna plane.
PA

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations claimed that Thornton fell to his death when he jumped out of the plane and 'hit his head on the tail of the aircraft' and failed to open his parachute.

The 40-year-old was found in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee, wearing night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest and Gucci loafers. Quite the attire. He also had $4,500 in cash on him, as well as guns, knives and the keys to a plane.

When the aircraft's flightpath was assessed, police found nine duffel bags of cocaine - the tenth duffel bag was found with the bear in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

That isn't the end of the tale for the bear. It is now stuffed and can be seen at the Kentucky For Kentucky store in Lexington (which is in Kentucky, unsurprisingly). Oh, and it's been dubbed 'Pablo Eskobear'. Fitting. Very fitting indeed.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Animals