Nicolas Cage to portray Tiger King’s Joe Exotic in scripted series
As if The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent wasn’t already the most Nicolas Cage (Mandy) project he could sign on for, the star has inked a deal to star in a scripted series centered on Joe Exotic, the curious subject of the hit Netflix docuseries Tiger King, according to Variety.
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The story, based on the Texas Monthly article “Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild” by Leif Reigstad, centers on Joe Schreibvogel, aka Joe Exotic, an eccentric zookeeper in Oklahoma who fights to keep his park at the sake of his own sanity and will explore how he became Joe Exotic and lost himself to a character of his own creation.
The eight-episode scripted series will be produced by Imagine Television Studios and CBS Television Studios and is planned to be taken to the market this week, with Dan Lagana (American Vandal) set to serve as writer, showrunner and executive producer of the series through his overall deal at CBS Television Studios. Paul Young, who optioned the article with Lagana, is set to executive produce through his banner Make Good Content, while Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Samie Kim Falvey will executive produce alongside Cage through his banner Saturn Films, and Scott Brown and Megan Creydt for Texas Monthly.
The currently untitled series will mark the first role of Cage’s career on the big screen, having starred exclusively in films aside from appearances on Saturday Night Live as well as a failed pilot called The Best of Times in 1981 and a televised stage production of Industrial Symphony No. 1 directed by David Lynch (Twin Peaks) in 1990, the same year he starred in Lynch’s cult classic Wild at Heart.
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In addition to being the showrunner on the Emmy-nominated Netflix mockumentary American Vandal, Lagana is also known for his work on the short-lived MTV series Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous starring Bo Burnham (Eighth Grade) and the Hulu comedy Deadbeat.
The 7-part true crime documentary series was directed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin. It is executive produced by Chris Smith, Fisher Stevens, Goode, and Chaiklin. Since its release, the docuseries became an instant phenomenon and had earned a rating of 93% at Rotten Tomatoes, as well as garnering an audience of 34.3 million unique viewers in the first 10 days of availability.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
