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Last year’s Tiger King was one of the most watched documentaries ever. The craze over Tiger King series prompted a slew of projects. Rob Lowe was working on a series with Ryan Murphy last year, although we haven’t heard much about that. Kate McKinnon signed to to play Carole Baskin in a project which will air on Peacock. There was an Amazon series planned starring Nicolas Cage as Joe Exotic. Nicolas Cage has stated that the project has been scrapped. Nicolas spoke to Variety about it. He said that he was presented with “two excellent scripts” but that Amazon ultimately canceled the project because the interest in Joe Exotic has waned. Here are a few highlights via CNN:
“I read two excellent scripts, which I did think were excellent, but I think Amazon ultimately felt that it was material that had become past tense because it took so long for it come together,” he said. “They felt at one point that it was lightning in a bottle, but that point has since faded into the distance and it’s no longer relevant.”
“Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” was a Netflix true crime docuseries that became a phenomenon when it was released last year.
The participants were a colorful group of characters and Hollywood soon came calling with the planned Amazon series and new streamer Peacock announcing a “Tiger King” project starring Kate McKinnon.
In other news, Joe Exotic is being resentenced for his murder for hire plot against his nemesis Carole Baskin. This does not mean that he will automatically get out of prison. I haven’t seen Tiger King. My mom loved the show and just about everyone around me was buzzing about it. While I don’t believe that Nicolas Cage is the greatest actor of my generation, I think he would have pulled off Joe’s character. From what I seen of Joe, he and Nicolas have the same sort of over the top awkwardness. I would have been game for a movie or dramatized show based on Joe’s life.
It has been a while since I have seen Nicolas in a movie. His new film, Pig, is getting some praise but I don’t know if I will see it. However I am looking forward to Nicolas re-entering Hollywood so to speak. He’s not the best actor, but I do enjoy watching him onscreen.
I think we need a third National Treasure movie with Nicolas Cage, that’s what I think, lol.
I can definitely see the argument that this is old material by now. It was SUCH a big deal in the beginning of the pandemic, I think partly because most of us were home and watching a ton of TV and it was something we could all discuss – but now it feels……dated, almost. Like last March feels like a different world. I don’t know that I want to watch something that would remind me so much of that time.
Yes, more National Treasure, please, such a reliable Sunday afternoon watch.
My husband loves the national treasure franchise and it’s a big hit with my kids too. I like it. It’s unapologetically what it is. 😆
If Harrison Ford can keep coming back for Indiana Jones we absolutely deserve more National Treasure. They are a firm favourite in our household.
I think once the initial frenzy over it died down, and the memes, people could sort of look back on it critically, and realized it was just a sad, disturbing story. I mean, yeah, remove the country music videos and the gay throuples, etc. – and it’s a story about a guy engaged in rampant animal cruelty trying to eliminate a woman who was trying to draw attention to him and the cat buying industry. Like, that’s just sad at the end of the day.
Yess thank you! And it brought out people’s misogyny. They were essentially rewarding this guy and no one seemed to care he was also an animal abuser. So disturbing.
Didnt carol exploit the ‘volunteers’ working for her just like the others featured in th documentary too though?
Well said. I have never watched this show and can’t, because of the cruelty to the great cats. And the way Carole is treated, when she is only person in this who treats the cats humanely, shows our blindness to misogyny.
The Carol killed her husband angle to me was so weird – she says at one point that Don (the husband) took his private plane on monthly trips to Central America that he kept secret. And the series never brings it up again. To me, it was pretty clear what that suggests – that Don was involved in the drug trade. Don disappearing from a cartel or being killed by them is far more likely than his wife doing it and feeding him to a tiger, but the show seemed to really gleefully play with the idea.
I’m so glad this show & Joe Exotic have fallen off the radar because it was extremely unethical to sensationalize the abuse of big cats. After that show aired, there was an increase in attendance at roadside zoos, including the one Joe Exotic used to run and was purchased by other problematic sleezeballs. As an animal lover, I could never bring myself to watch that show because it made a star out of an animal abuser.
I think the directors had it out for Carol, honestly. He did an interview after the show came out where he admitted that he disliked Carol because she had big cats in cages at her sanctuary, too. Even though Carol tried to explain to him that these cats were born in captivity and thus, could not ever re-enter the wild, he said he would consider it more humane to euthanize them (Carol says she doesn’t do this because she finds it unfair to kill the cats solely because they are captive and also, letting them live at the sanctuary allows them to educate the visitors about why keeping them as domestic animals is wrong). She openly says she wants to be put out of business hopefully when breeding and selling big cats becomes illegal. I am not saying Carol is a saint, but it was clear the show viewed her as basically on the same level as Joe, and that just seems unfair to her.
Thank you, I hate that guy for his treatment of animals. I am VERY anti-cruelty to all creatures great and small.
I cannot stand the sound of Nic Cage’s voice, but that could very well just be me, lol.
Lol I was about to post how much I like his voice acting in Croods and Spiderman.
Would he even know an excellent script anymore? All he does is work on any project offered, and he has been in so many crap movies for years to pay his debts and live his lifestyle. He once had such an interesting career.
I enjoy hate-watching Nic Cage movies. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you watch him. He’s so over-the-top bad that it’s entertaining. It’s like he’s in on the joke and he plays it cheesy on purpose.
Yeah, he’s definitely a fun actor to watch. For a real treat go back to his early career (Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart) and you’ll find yourself love-watching instead 😉
I think thats what hes doing yes. He is odd for sure but most of us arent in the arts and as comfortable with or access the range of emotions actors do for their jobs. He doesn’t want such a rigid range of performances for his job that other actors may be more comfortable with
Tiger King was such a strange point-in-time thing that worked exactly then, in exactly those circumstances, circumstances we’re (hopefully) not ever going to see again. I don’t think it would have been so successful at any other point in time. I would have absolutely loved to see Nic Cage as Joe Exotic but we can’t always get what we want, I guess.
A clever movie about people watching the tiger king/beginning of pandemic, might work! But only as a background thing. Or maybe no one wants to remember that time or be reminded of it. Too soon.
I don’t know. I would watch a Tiger King reboot.
Agree that Tiger King was never about longevity! I’m no TV executive but I remember a year or so ago When they started talking about the Kate McCannon project and other Tiger King spin off a that no one was going to give a damn by the time they came out. Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. And let’s be honest, the world does not need more tiger king.
In other words, “they didn’t offer me enough.”