Nicolas Cage will play Joe Exotic in Tiger King scripted series from American Vandal showrunner
There’s a pandemic, all our favorite TV shows keep ending, and there are apparently “murder hornets” now, but at least 2020 is giving us Nicolas Cage as Joe Exotic. The Wicker Man star [not John Wick star as was erroneously published earlier] is set to play the eccentric zoo owner in a new scripted series based on the same Texas Monthly article that spawned Netflix’s breakout hit docuseries Tiger King, THR reports.
American Vandal showrunner Dan Lagana and Paul Young reportedly optioned the Texas Montly article in June 2019 and Cage had been in talks to play the lead role since April. The show has yet to be picked up by a network, but Laguna will serve as writer and showrunner for the new series, which is currently titled Joe Exotic and “will center on Joe as he fights to keep his animal park even at the risk of losing his sanity. It will explore how Joe became Joe Exotic and how he lost himself to a character of his own creation,” according to THR. It will be Cage’s first TV role.
Cage and Lagana’s series is separate from the series based on the Wondery podcast Joe Exotic: Tiger King, which will star Kate McKinnon as possible husband-killer Carole Baskin. It’s also separate from the Ryan Murphy-produced project that Rob Lowe says will star him as Joe Exotic. So many Joes, so little time.
Of course, with the lead roles cast in more than one series, The A.V. Club thinks it’s a great time to re-up our picks for who to cast as the supporting characters in Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin’s lives.
In case you’ve been living under a rock: Netflix’s Tiger King centers on Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, and a few other central figures in the Big Cat Community. It launched on the streaming service in late March and amassed 34 million viewers in just 10 days, topping the success of Stranger Things 2.
[via THR]