How Universal Made Moviegoers Addicted To ‘Cocaine Bear’: Elizabeth Banks Horror Comedy Opens To $23M
deadline.com“‘Nobody likes to watch people getting eaten by lions” Apparently this was the response by the late Sumner Redstone during his National Amusement exhibition days after he saw a screening of the 1981 Tom Skerritt lion movie, Savage Harvest, relayed to me by an exhibition source who overheard him.
As funny as Redstone’s reaction was, it’s an axiom that has rung true: Certain animal-eat-people movies just don’t work. Moviegoers chomp on sharks movies like Jaws and Meg, but other treacherous animal movies aren’t prime to high openings, i.e.
Paramount’s alligator movie Crawl ($12M, $39M final domestic) and more recently Universal with its Idris Elba title Beast ($11.5M opening, final US $31.8M) — which was a lion move.
However, this weekend Universal proved that everybody likes to watch people get eaten by bears as their R-rated Elizabeth Banks directed Cocaine Bear opened to $23M.
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