Hollywood: Amazon lands Nicolas Cage-led Joe Exotic drama

A TV project starring Nicolas Cage as popular Netflix series 'Tiger King' subject Joe Exotic has found a home at Amazon.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the tech giant's Prime Video streaming platform will develop the scripted series from CBS Television Studios and Imagine Entertainment. Amazon Studios has also come aboard to produce.

The potential series is based on a 2019 'Texas Monthly' story about Joe Schreibvogel, aka Joe Exotic, how he built a private zoo in Oklahoma and his feuds with Carole Baskin and Jeff Lowe. All three are featured in Netflix's docuseries 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness'.

The Cage project is one of two scripted series based on the Schreibvogel story that is in the works. American actor Kate McKinnon is set to play Baskin in a drama that's been ordered to series as a cross-platform venture on NBC, USA Network, and streamer Peacock. That show is based on the American podcast network - Wondery's 'Joe Exotic' podcast.

The story will centre on Schreibvogel (Nicholas Cage), an eccentric, exotic zookeeper in Oklahoma who fights to keep his park, even at the risk of losing his sanity. The series will live in the lion's den with Joe, explore how he became Joe Exotic, and how he lost himself to a character of his own creation.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the 56-year-old actor Cage, meanwhile, is also set to executive produce and voice the lead character -- a dragon -- in another series for Amazon, based on Eoin Colfer's novel 'Hellfire'.