Nicolas Cage won't play Joe Exotic in an Amazon Tiger King project after all
It seems Nicolas Cage has been dethroned.
EW has learned that Amazon's planned drama series starring Cage as Joe Exotic — the eccentric Oklahoma zookeeper at the center of the hit Netflix docuseries Tiger King — is no longer in development.
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness took the world by storm in 2020, enthralling quarantined viewers with its story of a dodgy animal park owner and an alleged plot to murder an animal rights activist. But Cage told Variety recently that although he read "two excellent scripts" for Amazon's take, the time for the project has passed.
"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."
JC Olivera/Getty; youtube Nicolas Cage and Joe Exotic
A representative for Cage didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
Though it would have been interesting to see Cage sporting a version of Exotic's bleach-blond mullet, there's another Tiger King-inspired series in the works at Peacock, featuring John Cameron Mitchell as Exotic and Kate McKinnon as his rival Carole Baskin.
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