Tiger King‘s spiritual successor is set to debut on HBO Max on August 6, 2026, showcasing another dimension of the weird, unflattering, and often cruel world of the exotic animal trade. The Tiger King Netflix documentary from 2020 feels like it got a large portion of the world through the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The story of Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, Doc Antle, and their menageries of exotic felines was hard to look away from. Documentarian Eric Goode followed up this series with Chimp Crazy for HBO in 2024, a four-episode documentary about Tonia Haddix and her complex relationship with her pet chimpanzees.
Goode is not finished with the wild world of exotic pets and animal smuggling, and in August, Monsters of God will premiere on HBO. This five-episode series will dive into the lucrative and colorful world of the exotic reptile trade. Goode once again makes contact with the biggest players in this dark world and uncovers a billion-dollar industry that began back in 1973 with the Endangered Species Act (via WBD).
Obsessive customers, cynical poachers, and opportunistic traders fill the documentary, which, boiled down, shows how this business is pushing species to extinction. Monsters of God will follow the people whose ostensible “love” of animals drives the market and escalates to the shadowy business people behind the money.
In his previous documentaries, his subjects were often already struggling to keep together their small animal fiefdoms, and Goode and his camera crew arrive to watch the collapse. The animal empire in Monsters of God is far from at its end, and unless Goode has a massive, industry-shaking surprise in the finale, it’s unlikely episode 5 will see any of the major players in cuffs.
This is a bigger investigation than Goode has undertaken previously, and unlike Tiger King and Chimp Crazy, there aren’t just a few people under the microscope, but a whole ecosystem. It’s arguably Goode’s most ambitious project to date; whether that will translate into a watchable documentary remains to be seen.
Other Tiger King Follow-Up Projects Have Failed To Capture The Same Mass Appeal
Though Chimp Crazy was a brief success, it didn’t match the popularity of Tiger King, and seasons 2 through 3 of Tiger King were even bigger downgrades. Tiger King was lightning in a bottle, and a lot of that lightning was due to the ridiculous persona of Joe Exotic.
The animal cruelty aspects of these documentaries create a conundrum. When the documentary focuses on the injustice and danger these animals are in, it’s affecting and moving, but it’s also extremely difficult to watch. It doesn’t make for bingeable TV, as necessary as those aspects are to the show.
When these documentaries focus on the strange people and personalities involved, they are exciting and surprising, but they also risk ignoring the larger problems the documentaries are supposedly there to investigate. Worse, they may even be engaging in the type of voyeurism that the docs are condemning people like Joe Exotic and Tonia Haddix for in the first place.
Tiger King had the right combination of riveting characters and explorations into a dark, overlooked piece of American culture. Successor shows and seasons haven’t struck the same balance. Monsters of God will need to balance the real horrors of the industry with the preposterous characters involved with it.
- Release Date
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2026 – 2026-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Eric Goode