It’s been fully two years since Hollywood indulged itself with a movie that was mostly about how goddamn scary bears are—ah, Cocaine Bear, were we ever so young?—and apparently it’s that time once again. Variety reports that Mia Goth, Zach Galifianakis, and Dan Stevens have signed on for a new bear-adjacent revenge movie titled Hey Bear, about a woman (Goth, fresh off a more sympathetic take toward potentially lethal Creatures in Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein) who decides to take deadly revenge on a bear after it kills her husband (Stevens), and then, instead of being euthanized, is simply transferred to another national park.
While that’s interesting enough, the really noteworthy thing about the film is that it’s being directed by Jonathan Krisel, who made a name for himself as one of the primary creative voices—including serving as director—on both Portlandia and Galifianakis’ show Baskets. Krisel’s been on the verge of breaking into film for years at this point, having been attached to a Sesame Street movie that was first floated back in 2019, and a Detective Pikachu sequel that never seemed to get off the ground. Now, he’s apparently doing “Grizzly Man if it was fictitious and the Grizzly Man’s wife decided she was going to kill that fucking bear,” having spent the intervening years since his last big Hollywood push working on shows like Moonbase 8 and The English Teacher.
Hey Bear will serve as an obvious reunion for Krisel and Galifianakis, who’s playing a “socially awkward park ranger” who ends up accompanying Goth’s Claire on her quest for bear assassination. Written by regular Nathan Fielder collaborator Carrie Kemper (fresh off both The Curse and The Rehearsal), the film is being described as a “coming of rage” comedy, centered on Goth’s character coming out of her shell through the power of murder, which is the sort of clever phrasing that we’re going to be mildly, irrationally angry about for the rest of the week.
