Film

Nicolas Cage Will Play Joe Exotic In A New ‘Tiger King’ Series And The Internet Cannot Deal

by Joseph Earp  5 May 2020
Nicolas Cage and Joe Exotic

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Within days of Tiger King dropping, the show’s devotees immediately jumped on the job of fan-casting a feature-length film adaptation based on the bugnuts Netflix hit.

For days, people put together their dream cast, with Danny McBride most frequently touted as the best choice to play the show’s extreme anti-hero, Joe Exotic.

Now, Variety has exclusively revealed the actual choice for Exotic, and it’s a doozy: Nicolas Cage will be the actor who slaps on the dyed-blonde mullet and plays Joe.

Cage wasn’t much touted as a potential casting choice when the internet was trying to assemble its own wrecking crew for the Tiger King adaptation. That’s surprising. In actual fact, Cage is a perfect choice for the tiger owner, mostly on account of his wild, antic energy. Just imagine Cage with that thick handlebar moustache and those big piercings, bringing the burning kerosene can of energy that made him famous in such films as Leaving Las Vegas and Con Air.

Other details about the adaptation and its cast are sadly scant. All we know is that the fictional spin will be a TV series, rather than a feature-length film, and that it’s being put together by some of the minds behind adored Netflix mockumentary American Vandal.

That’s a great pedigree, and a strong suggestion that the show will be as wild and wooly as the documentary series that inspired it.

Anyway, understandably, the internet is going wild over this morning’s news.

Sometimes, the fates smile down kindly upon us. And Nicolas Cage playing Exotic is exactly the nice surprise that we have long, long deserved.