Before Joe Exotic became a household name, the genre of “over-the-top tiger shows†belonged pretty much exclusively to Siegfried & Roy, the illusionist duo whose Las Vegas big cat show made them celebrities in the 1980s. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the documentarians behind Tiger King are reportedly developing a new project about the 2003 attack that left the late Roy Horn severely injured, ended their show, and created controversy around what caused a white tiger named Mantacore to drag Horn off-stage mid-performance.
According to THR, wildlife veterinarian and field biologist Dr. James Liu, reportedly part of Tiger King’s production team, contacted their outlet to request contact information for Christopher Lawrence, the former tiger handler for Siegfried & Roy who, in 2019, denied the public narrative that Mantacore had merely overreacted to Horn’s having a stoke, alleging instead that human error lead to the incident.
Writes the Reporter, “Liu wanted Lawrence to respond to Siegfried Fischbacher, who, months after declining to speak for THR’s coverage, had rebuked his former employee during an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America.†Liu hoped that an upcoming episode under the Tiger King name from filmmakers Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin would “act as a higher-minded corrective†to the more ridiculous human-focused elements of the Joe-heavy series, but when reached for comment, Goode Films told THR it is “untrue that the direction is going in a more conservational route.â€