Tiger King TV drama starring Kate McKinnon to air on NBC

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

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.