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Tiger King TV drama starring Kate McKinnon to air on NBC

Series will chronicle Baskin's bizarre feud with tiger owner Joe Exotic

Annabel Nugent
Wednesday 26 August 2020 04:01 EDT
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The limited series drama adaptation of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin's feud has received a straight-to-series order at NBC Universal Television.

Kate McKinnon – previously Bombshell and Ghostbusters – will lead the cast as Carole Baskin, the big cat rights activist who found fame in Netflix's true-crime documentary Tiger King.

The forthcoming series is reportedly not a fictional adaptation of the popular Netflix show but rather is based on Joe Exotic, the second season of Wondery’s Over My Dead Body podcast.

The six-episode show, given the working title Joe Exotic, will follow the Saturday Night Live star as Baskin in her quest to rid the US of illegal big-cat zoos.

Similar to Tiger King, it will chronicle how Baskin learns that Joseph ‘Joe Exotic’ Maldonado-Passage “is breeding and using his big cats for profit” and “sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry”.

Baskin previously opened up to Entertainment Weekly about the casting choice, stating, “Kate McKinnon is a wonderful actress.”

The McKinnon-led series is only one of the multiple projects in the works that are based on the surreal events surrounding Baskin and Maldonado-Passage.

It was reported in May that Nicolas Cage will star as Maldonado-Passage in a separate eight-episode scripted series about the animal trader.

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