Cocaine Bear, the dark and twisted horror-comedy film that is set to release on February 24, 2023, and as absurd as it might sound, it is actually based on a twisted yet true story.  

The real story 

A real and unimaginable event that happened in Georgia, United States, in the 1980s is reimagined in Cocaine Bear, an upcoming film reputable filmmaker and actor Elizabeth Banks. Ever since its trailer release, the new horror comedy is already showing signs of being a hit with viewers. 

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In 1985, when the famed Cocaine Bear was discovered in Georgia, the cause of death was unmistakable. The duffel bag that had formerly contained more than 70 pounds of cocaine before it was ejected from a drug smuggler’s aircraft was discovered close to the 175-pound black bear. However, it was now torn apart, and 40 empty packages were lying about the carcass of the overdosed animal. 

The $15 million worth of cocaine that the predator consumed was dumped out of an aircraft in 1985 by drug dealer Andrew Thornton, the son of a rich horse farmer from Kentucky. 

Former attorney and drug enforcement officer Thornton was delivering items in northern Georgia after flying from Colombia on a cocaine smuggling mission in a Cessna. 

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations claims that Thornton died after jumping from the jet, “hitting his head on the tail of the aircraft,” and failing to deploy his parachute. Thornton was dressed in a bulletproof vest, Gucci loafers, night vision goggles, and night vision goggles when his corpse was discovered in a neighborhood driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

The dead bear and the tenth duffel bag were discovered in the Chattahoochee National Forest three months after Thornton’s death, south of the state border between Tennessee and Georgia. 

But the remarkable tale of the bear didn’t end there. The bear, now stuffed and given the name “Pablo Eskobear” in honor of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, is an unexpected tourist attraction at the Lexington, Kentucky, “Kentucky for Kentucky” mercantile store. 

After a lengthy cross-country search, they were able to obtain it, and they describe its peculiar history on their official website. 

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“Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine. There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that,” the medical examiner who performed the bear’s necropsy told the company’s founders.  

“Brain hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, heat stroke, renal failure, cardiac failure, and renal failure. Whatever it was, the bear had it.’  

Where is Pablo Eskobear now? 

Officials finally taxidermized the bear, which was then given to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area to be displayed in a tourist center. 

It later spent time in storage during a wildfire before landing up at a pawn shop in Nashville. Country music icon Waylon Jennings purchased it from there and gave it to a friend, Ron Thompson in Las Vegas. When the friend, Ron Thompson, passed away in 2009, his estate was sold at auction, and Chinese immigrant Zhu T’ang purchased Cocaine Bear for $200. 

The proprietors of Kentucky for Kentucky got in touch with Mr. T’ang’s widow after his passing in 2012, and she agreed to give them Cocaine Bear in exchange for their covering the cost of delivery. 

At the Lexington, Kentucky, company’s site in the Kentucky Fun Mall, the bear has become a social media celebrity in its own right.