There is seriously no end in sight to the craze that is Tiger King.
Late last year, a scripted series based on the Netflix phenomenon Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness was announced with Saturday Night Live‘s Kate McKinnon set to star and produce.
Now, a second scripted series is in the works, and this time, a veteran of the silver screen, Nicolas Cage, is set to play Joe Exotic.
Reported by Variety, the eight-episode series will be produced by Imagine Television Studios and CBS Television Studios.
According to the outlet, the show will be based on the Texas Monthly article Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild by Leif Reigstad.
“The story will centre around Joe Schreibvogel, a.k.a Joe Exotic, an eccentric, exotic zookeeper in Oklahoma who fights to keep his park even at the risk of losing his sanity. The series will live in the lion’s den with Joe, explore how he became Joe Exotic, and how he lost himself to a character of his own creation.”
While his film career was peaking in this ’90s, this series will mark the first TV appearance in Cage’s professional career.
Known for his roles in Face/Off, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona and his Oscar-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas, playing Joe Exotic, could be Cage’s best yet.
Tiger King was estimated to have reached an audience of 34.3 million viewers in its first ten days on the streaming platform.
Its popularity has spurred several off-shoots including a train-wreck interview episode starring Community’s Joel McHale, a comic-book and a bio-pic.
Last month, when news broke about the film, Exotic had only two actors in mind to play him, Brad Pitt and David Spade.
“He would like Brad Pitt or David Spade to play him,” directors of the Netflix series, Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin told The Hollywood Reporter.
“He doesn’t refer to David Spade as David Spade — he refers to him as ‘Joe Dirt,’” Chaiklin added.
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