The project about the ‘Tiger King’ subject comes from CBS TV Studios and Imagine Entertainment.
A TV project starring Nicolas Cage as Tiger King subject Joe Exotic has found a home at Amazon.
The tech giant’s Prime Video streaming platform will develop the scripted series from CBS Television Studios and Imagine Entertainment. Amazon Studios has also come aboard to produce.
The potential series is based on a 2019 Texas Monthly story about Joe Schreibvogel, aka Joe Exotic, how he built a private zoo in Oklahoma and his feuds with Carole Baskin and Jeff Lowe. All three are featured in Netflix’s docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
The Cage project is one of two scripted series based on the Schreibvogel story that are in the works. Kate McKinnon is set to play Baskin in a drama that’s been ordered to series as a cross-platform venture on NBC, USA Network and streamer Peacock. That show is based on Wondery’s Joe Exotic podcast.
Amazon’s version of the story will center on Schreibvogel (Cage), 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.
Dan Lagana (American Vandal) will serve as showrunner and executive produce with Brian Grazer (Empire) and Samie Kim Falvey for Imagine; Paul Young (Key & Peele) for Make Good Content; Cage via his Saturn Films; and Scott Brown and Megan Creydt for Texas Monthly.
Cage, meanwhile, is also set to executive produce and voice the lead character — a dragon — in another series for Amazon, based on Eoin Colfer’s novel Hellfire. He’s repped by WME, Stride Management and attorney Patrick Knapp of Goodman Genow.