‘Tiger King’: Joe Exotic TV Show Already in the Works, Kate McKinnon to Play Carole Baskin

Viewers going wild over Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness are about to get a treat, as a Joe Exotic TV show is currently in the works. The series will be led by SNL‘s Kate McKinnon, who will portray Carole Baskin, the animal rights activist and owner of the Big Cat Rescue in Citrus Park, Florida who became the target of the murder-for-hire plot in the Netflix true crime series.

The series was first confirmed to be in progress in November of 2019, with Deadline reporting at the time that the series was in development at Universal Content Productions, the studio behind Homecoming and Dirty John. A network is not yet attached to the unnamed series, which will be based on Joe Exotic, the second season of Wondery’s Over My Dead Body podcast.

“Joe ‘Exotic’ Shreibvogel does everything over the top. He loves big cats and has devoted his life to raising and breeding lions, tigers, and other exotic animals at his Oklahoma zoo. He croons ballads, shoots guns, and puts it all on YouTube,” a synopsis for the second season of the podcast reads. “But throughout his career, he’s made a lot of enemies. And the biggest of all is the owner of a big cat sanctuary in Florida named Carole Baskin. The feud between Joe and Carole gets messy, vicious, and outrageous — until both of them are pushed far beyond their limits. From Wondery, ‘Joe Exotic’ is reported and hosted by Rob Moor.”

Joe Exotic has been thrust back into the limelight following the Friday, March 20 premiere of Netflix’s true crime documentary about his murder-for-hire plot, which was prompted by a long-standing feud with Baskin. In the days since the seven-part documentary premiered, social media has been flooded with viewers reacting to the bizarre tale.

However, while fans find amusement, Baskin has slammed the series as being “salacious and sensational,” alleging that the story portrayed on the platform is not the one she had agreed to be a part of.

“When the directors of the Netflix documentary Tiger King came to us five years ago they said they wanted to make the big cat version of Blackfish (the documentary that exposed abuse at SeaWorld) that would expose the misery caused by the rampant breeding of big cat cubs for cub petting exploitation and the awful life the cats lead in roadside zoos and back yards if they survive,” she wrote in part in a recent blog post.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is currently available for streaming. The McKinnon-led Joe Exotic series does not yet have a network or premiere date.