Nicolas Cage is set to play Tiger King‘s Joe Exotic in an eight-episode scripted series, the actor’s publicist confirmed to Global News.
This will be Cage’s first TV series role of his career in the series from CBS Television Studios and Imagine Television.
The series will be based on a Texas Monthly story published in 2019 by Leif Reigstad that recounts how Exotic built his private zoo in Oklahoma.
The story also details his feud with Carole Baskin and Jeff Lowe, who were both featured in Netflix’s Tiger King series.
The project is currently titled Joe Exotic and it will focus on Exotic as he “fights to keep his zoo even at the risk of losing his sanity,” according to Variety.
It will also detail how he became “Joe Exotic” and how he lost himself to the character he created.
American Vandal showrunner Dan Lagana will serve as writer and showrunner and will executive produce the series with Paul Young, Brian Grazer, Samie Kim Falvey, Cage and Scott Brown and Megan Creydt of Texas Monthly. James Seidman and Natalie Berkus from Imagine Television will oversee the project.
ID is also set to launch the series Investigating the Strange World of Joe Exotic, which will “delve into the biggest mystery in true crime today, helmed by the biggest character in the world: Joe Exotic, himself.”
“Viewers are understandably riveted by Netflix’s Tiger King, but the millions of true crime fans around the world were left wanting more,” said Henry Schleiff, group president for ID, the Travel Channel, the American Heroes Channel and Destination America.
“ID is the perfect place to find the inevitable sequel to this drama – featuring a missing husband, a hit man, and the illegal business of exotic animals. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag and address the lingering questions that viewers demand be answered.”
Tiger King was released on Netflix in March and was watched by 34.3 million unique viewers in its first 10 days of release in the U.S., according to the data firm Nielsen.
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