Laying it on the line.... Inside incredible true story of the 'Cocaine Bear' who ate duffel bag full of 75lb of coke that dropped from a smugglers plane and how new movie takes WILD artistic license

A trailer for Universal Pictures' 'Cocaine Bear' dropped Wednesday,  The movie stars Keri Russell,  Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich, Kristofer Hivju, O'Shea Jackson, and Margo Martindale and is directed by Elizabeth Banks The film is inspired by true events from 1985 in which a smuggler was moving cocaine from Colombia and threw cocaine out of his plane  A 75-pound package of coke thrown from the Cessna made its way into the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia  In November 1985, a hunter in the forest discovered a 175-pound bear who had died after getting into the cocaine and overdosing  The movie, which is slated to come out in February, takes major artistic liberties, setting the coked-up bear on a rampage 

Social media could not stop talking after a trailer for the new movie ‘Cocaine Bear’ dropped online Wednesday, with many scratching their heads at the line reading: ‘inspired by true events.’

The movie, directed by Elizabeth Banks, follows ‘an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens’ who ‘converge in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine.’

While the film takes major artistic liberties, the premise of the movie is indeed ‘inspired by true events’ as stated.

The real-life version happened in the mid-1980s when a 175-pound bear in the Chattahoochee National Forest, located in northern Georgia, got into dozens of pounds of the drug.

Universal Picture’s new ‘Cocaine Bear’ trailer tells the story of a 500-pound bear who is high on the drug and is ‘inspired by a true story’

The film is inspired by true events, but takes wild artistic liberties with the story

The newly-released trailer for the action-comedy has already amassed millions of views across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

The trailer shows the ragtag cast of characters, played by Keri Russell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson, and Margo Martindale, running from and getting killed by the bear who is extremely high.

In reality, the bear never killed anyone and never went on a coke-fueled rampage, however.

The true story starts with the discovery of a heavily-armed dead body found in a Knoxville, Tennessee, driveway.

On September 11, 1985, police found Andrew Carter Thornton II deceased in the driveway of a home wearing a bulletproof vest and equipped with thousands of dollars in cash and roughly 75 pounds of cocaine.

Thornton, a smuggler who had been flying on a Cessna 405 into the US from Colombia, had attempted to parachute out of the plane with the drugs and cash.

The drugs he had in his possession at the time of his death had an estimated value of $14 million.

Keri Russell stars in the new film, which follows the story of a bear who is high on cocaine

In a trailer for the film released Wednesday, the bear ingests the drug and then goes on a coke-fueled rampage

In real life, while the bear did in fact get into a massive package of the drug, he died from an overdose

Andrew Thornton was killed when his parachute did not deploy during a jump from his plane

The man’s parachute never deployed after he jumped from the plane, which was later found 60 miles away, according to Backpacker.

Before jumping to his eventual death, Thornton had placed the plane on autopilot and directed it toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The plane crashed in North Carolina and days later, maps of Jamaica, clothing, and a pilot logbook connected to the aircraft were found near Atlanta.

Thornton’s death actually inspired a storyline on FX’s ‘Justified,’ during season four of the show.

As investigators searched for drugs believed to be dropped from the plane, several ripped up packages with cocaine remnants were discovered in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.

The real bear never killed anyone when it got into the cocaine he found in a Georgia forest in 1985

In the upcoming film, the bear is seen taking victims one by one while high on the drug

The movie does appear to stick with the real life story of Andrew Carter Thornton’s death, which occurred when his parachute did not deploy after he jumped out of his plane

The action comedy is set to debut in February 2023 and features ‘Modern Family’ star Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Two months after Thornton’s body was discovered, a hunter in the forest stumbled upon a dead 175-pound black bear.

Nearby where the bear was found, officials located a duffel bag believed to have contained upwards of 75 pounds of the hard drug.

The flight path taken by the Cessna did in fact go over the area and officials ruled that the bear had gotten into the bag and ingested all the cocaine.

‘The bear got to it before we could, and he tore the duffel bag open, got him some cocaine and OD’d (overdosed),’ Gary Garner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told the Associated Press in one interview at the time.

The chief medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab in an interview said that upon an autopsy, the bear’s stomach was found to have been ‘literally packed to the brim with cocaine.’ 

The true story of the ‘Cocaine Bear’ is much sadder and less dramatic than the upcoming film. In reality, the bear’s stomach was found ‘packed to the brim’ with the drug and he experienced respiratory failure, hyperthermia, heart failure, and more from the overdose

The medical official clarified that he believes less than five grams had actually been absorbed into the bear’s bloodstream before he died. A fatal dose for a human of the same size is 7.5 grams, according to Backpack.

‘There isn’t a mammal on the planet that could survive that. Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, stroke. You name it, that bear had it,’ the official told Kentucky for Kentucky.

In spite of the serious internal complications, the bear’s exterior was well enough intact that officials stuffed the animal and gifted it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.

The animal, affectionately dubbed ‘Pablo Escobear’ now resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Affectionately dubbed ‘Pablo Escobear’ the infamous animal now resides in Lexington, Kentucky and can be visited

In total, officials believe that 40 packages of cocaine were dropped from the plane, each holding about a kilogram worth of the drug. The street value of each package, roughly 88 pounds, was estimated at $20 million.

In the film, which is slated to release in February, Ray Liotta is the head of the ring responsible for the drugs dropped out of the plane. The movie was one of Liotta’s last roles filmed before his death in May.

The actor is flanked by Ehrenreich and Jackson who set out to find the drugs and eventually stumble upon the hyper-fictionalized version of the drugged-up bear.

Ray Liotta, who died in May at 67-years-old, stars in the trailer for the new film, which will be one of his last

Liotta plays the head of the ring searching for the drugs that were dropped in the forest, alongside Ehrenreich and Jackson, who play his accomplices