Every now and then we need proof that there are good things in the world. That sometimes, we get the things we want, even if we don’t know we want them. Well, this is it. Nic Cage is going to be playing Joe Exotic.
Variety reports Nic Cage will be playing Tiger King breakout Joe Exotic in an untitled series by Dan Lagana and Paul Young. Lagana is probably best known as showrunner of the Netflix series American Vandal. The scripted show won’t be based on Tiger King, the wildly-popular docuseries that made Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, and expired Walmart deli meat pizza known commodities. It’ll instead be adapted from Leif Reigstad’s Texas Monthly article “Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild.”
This marks the first regular TV series for Cage, and I can’t think of a better way to start than tackling the crazy world of Joe Exotic. Given some of the…odd, choices Cage has made and his reputation as someone who is completely off the reservation, the casting couldn’t be more perfect. He can just rock the same mullet hairpiece from Con Air.
After a couple of really strong films in Mandy and Color Out of Space, Cage has a really oddball stretch ahead of him. He’ll play a janitor taking on evil animatronics in Wally’s Wonderland, followed by Pig in which he plays a truffle hunter, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in which he plays himself trying to land a Tarantino movie.