Cocaine Bear Chomps Up Box Office with $23 Million Debut, Surpassing Expectations

MovieWeb

By Jeremy Dick

Published Feb 26, 2023

Cocaine Bear has exceeded its intial projections to take the No. 2 spot at the box office.

Universal Pictures

The wild new film Cocaine Bear is a hit at the box office. With its debut in theaters, the movie has raked in over $23 million at the domestic box office, going far past the initial projections for the film's theatrical premiere. It was enough to put Cocaine Bear in the No. 2 spot behind only the Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantuamania, which comes into its second weekend. However, it's worth noting that Quantumania saw a huge drop of around 70% with weekend two, earning $32.2 million to follow its opening weekend haul of $106.1 million.

Per Variety, Universal president of domestic distribution, Jim Orr, commented on the success of Cocaine Bear by stating, “It’s an outrageous comedy that absolutely delivers on its premise. People were ready to see something over the top.”

As it sounds, Cocaine Bear tells the crazy story of a bear fueled by cocaine that goes on a bloody rampage. It's clear from the trailer that the movie embraces its over-the-top nature and excessive violence, so filmgoers know what to expect from this movie going in. The film is inspired by the true story of a bear found dead of an overdose after ingesting large amounts of cocaine, but the twist with the movie adaptation is that the bear didn't die, instead embarking on a brutal massacre. Elizabeth Banks directed the film using a screenplay by Jimmy Warden, who couldn't stop thinking about the bear getting his revenge.

"A bear ate a bunch of cocaine. That really happened," Warden told us in an exclusive interview. "And since the insanity of what I was creating started with an actual incident, it was able to ground the entire thing in reality. Nobody could ever say, 'Good title but that would never happen. A bear, doing cocaine? Psh.' Yeah, well, it did happen! It’s a great inciting incident. And the bear dying immediately would be a pretty short movie (as well as extremely sad), so this is my weird fantasy about what could have happened if the bear had survived."

Don't Sleep on Jesus Revolution

To secure the second place spot at the box office, Cocaine Bear overcame Jesus Revolution, but perhaps filmgoers shouldn't be sleeping on the latter. Jesus Revolution, starring Kelsey Grammer and Joel Courtney, tells the story of a group of hippies partnering up with a failing church to help spread the word of Christ. Its reviews were mixed with professional critics at Rotten Tomatoes, but it earned a near-perfect 99% audience score. Additionally, it garnered an A+ grade from CinemaScore, suggesting that almost every casual filmgoer who sees the film has been walking away satisfied.

You can see more detailed box office information at The Numbers, and you can check out the full top 10 list for the domestic box office for this weekend below.