The directors of Tiger King thought they were making a film on big cat ownership in the US. Then their subject was charged with plotting a murder
Tiger King, a new
Netflix docuseries resulting from a five-year odyssey that fully earns the term wild, started, perhaps surprisingly, in the reptile world. In 2014, Eric Goode, a film-maker and longtime conservationist, was looking into a notorious snake dealer in south
Florida when a stranger mentioned, off-hand, “check out what I just bought”. There’s a collective “oh shit” when he slides open his van to reveal a snow leopard resting in a cage, in 100F heat. “It just blew my mind: what is a snow leopard doing in the back of this guy’s van?” Goode says early in episode one. “That set me on this journey to really understand what is going on with people keeping big cats in this country.”
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