This Friday, the Documentary “Cocaine Bear: The True Story” Bites Into Peacock

When it comes to the real story behind Cocaine Bear, which Peacock will examine in a brand-new documentary this week, the truth almost always resides between the lines.

Only on Peacock, Cocaine Bear: The True Story debuts on Friday, April 14.

The horror-comedy film, meanwhile, debuts tomorrow at Digital and Peacock.

The 60-minute film delves deeply into the unusual real-life incidents that inspired the popular Hollywood film Cocaine Bear. The documentary relates the tale of cocaine-addicted Georgia bear and blue-blood Drew Thornton from Kentucky and their epic drug run. Interviews with people most familiar with the case are included in the documentary, including those with the special agent and the former sheriff who were among the initial responders.

In the blockbuster Hollywood film Cocaine Bear, a massive bag of cocaine falls from the sky into the North Georgia woods where it is devoured by a black bear, setting off an epic savagery. With drug cartels, murder, mayhem, and a Lexington, Kentucky, blueblood named Drew Thornton, it all looks like fantasy, but it’s actually based on a true story that is just as weird as the premise of the movie. Thornton rejects a life of luxury and embraces the underworld, transitioning from a cop to an international drug trafficker who flies planeloads of cocaine into the United States from South America. However, one day he unexpectedly dies in a Knoxville, Tennessee driveway while armed to the teeth, carrying his own massive stash of cocaine, and donning a pair of…Gucci loafers?

The tale that underlies Cocaine Bear: The True Story is how this contemporary Icarus and his expensive shoes came to be inextricably linked to the cocaine bear.

ITN Productions and Brownstone Productions collaborated to create Cocaine Bear: The True Story.