Elizabeth Banks Says There Are 'Deep Background Discussions' About a “Cocaine Bear” Sequel (Exclusive)

The director tells PEOPLE she is “open to” a sequel to her 2023 horror comedy

Elizabeth Banks says it’s possible more intoxicated animals are coming to the big screen.

Speaking to PEOPLE ahead of the release of her latest film Skincare, the actor-director, 50, said conversations are underway for a potential sequel to her 2023 movie Cocaine Bear.

“I know there are deep background discussions about what something could be in that realm,” says Banks, who directed the horror-comedy. “I am not involved, currently, in a plan to bring more cocaine-animal movies to the screen, but I am open to it, of course.”

Cocaine Bear starred Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, Margo Martindale, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Ray Liotta. It sensationalized the 1985 true story of a black bear that reportedly consumed dozens of pounds of cocaine after a duffel bag of the substance was dropped out of a plane over rural Georgia by a drug smuggler.

The film follows the bear’s gruesome, drugged rampage, including the hikers, paramedics and delinquent children who cross its path.

“I love those characters and I made sure that just a couple stayed alive so that if we wanted to follow them somewhere, we could,” Banks says. “We’ll see what happens.”

Earlier this summer, as news broke of a group of marine biologists that found high levels of cocaine in a group of Brazilian sharpnose sharks on the coast near Rio de Janeiro, some fans wondered if the shocking story could be the basis for a spin-off film.

Related: Elizabeth Banks Defends 'Controversial' 'Cocaine Bear' Scene of Kids on Drugs: 'There Were Conversations'

Though Banks says she isn’t actively working on any such project, she acknowledges that she has been seeing “all of the cocaine shark memes going around.”

“I think it would have to be its own storyline,” Banks says of a theoretical Cocaine Shark movie.

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This isn’t the first time the words “cocaine shark” have trended — or Banks has answered questions about a shark-based spin-off.

When it was reported in early 2023 that three tons of cocaine floating in the Pacific Ocean had been recovered by New Zealand police, the star told PEOPLE she was certainly open to the premise for a film “if there’s a great story.”

"Jaws with cocaine, I don't see how that loses," she added.

Skincare, which stars Banks, Lewis Pullman, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and Nathan Fillion, is in theaters Aug. 16.

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