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Tiger King Joe Exotic Filming Netflix Special With Making A Murderer's Steven Avery
Following the breakout success of Tiger King on Netflix, incarcerated wild animal collector Joe Exotic is planning to record a feature-length special with Steven Avery, the subject of Making A Murderer. Although Joe Exotic has been trying to make a name for himself for decades, creating his own reality show, appearing on a Louis Theroux documentary and even making an ill-fated run for President, it's the Netflix series documenting his vendetta against animal rights protestor Carole Baskin that's made him a household name. Now, he's petitioning Present Donald Trump to grant him parole.
Avery, on the other hand, was never intended for the spotlight. A Wisconsin auto trader, he was wrongly convicted for sexual assault and attempted murder in 1985 and later went back to prison for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005. As the two seasons of Making A Murderer posit, he was framed by the Manitowoc County police, and is now - alongside nephew Brendan Dassey - is fighting to have the conviction overturned. The show transformed his case into one of the most high profile in the United States, although it's had little effect on his crusade.
Now, the two are going to cross over. Netflix has announced a feature-length special that will see Joe Exotic and Steven Avery connected over a series of video calls from prison in FMC Fort Worth and Waupun Correctional Institution respectively. The pair will discuss their previous life on the outside, the experience of letting filmmakers into their case, and the shared hope for freedom. The full press release is below:
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After exploring corruption in the American legal system and stranger-than-fiction world of big cat owners, Netflix is bringing together two of the most talked-about documentary personalities into a Netflix Original feature-length special. Making A Murder's Steven Avery and Tiger King's Joe Exotic will meet via video chat to reveal secrets making their Netflix Original series and shed a light on their developing cases for freedom.
The Untitled Steve Avery/Joe Exotic Feature will be overseen by Tiger King directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin. Making A Murderer's writer/director duo Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos are not directly involved with the project, but have given it their blessing and will be credited as executive producers.
What the Netflix announcement doesn't make clear is how exactly the special will be structured. As established, both Joe Exotic and Steven Avery are currently incarcerated, and previous documentaries only used recorded phone calls to involve them. It would seem that Netflix has gained some greater access, at the very least to the video files used for the proposed communication. Also not stated is when the recordings will take place, although given the recency of Tiger King's release, they're unlikely to have taken place yet.
There's a mounting skepticism of what Netflix hopes to achieve with its titillating true crime content. While the streaming service has its fair share of carefully measured documentary deep dives, both Making A Murderer and Tiger King have been met with criticisms of sensualization for the sake of pure entertainment, and this new special doesn't look likely to stop them any time soon.
