When it comes to “Tiger King,” the million-dollar question has got to be, would it have been as popular if most of the country weren’t on pandemic lockdown? We’ll never really know the answer, but there’s no doubt, in my mind at least, that a majority of Americans staying at home probably helped boost its numbers. The Netflix docuseries has become a pop culture phenomenon of epic magnitude. The rivalry between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, it seems, only the second most-discussed topic in the country after COVID-19.
Want proof?
According to Variety, Nielsen announced that “Tiger King” was seen by 34.3 million unique viewers in the US alone over its first 10 days of release. Those 10-day numbers easily beat former Netflix series “Stranger Things 2” and its 31.2 million viewers, however, “Stranger Things 3” garnered a bit more viewership (36.3 million viewers) and is still the record-holder in that department. Going past the first 10-days and “Tiger King” has assumingly clocked in more than 40 million viewers. That means 1/8 of the entire country has seen the Joe Exotic saga.
And yet, it was word of mouth that truly got “Tiger King” soaring. According to Nielsen, the docuseries started off with just 280,000 unique viewers in the US in its first 24 hours, then that number jumped to 1 million daily viewers by day 3, then 2 million by day 7, and 4 million by day 9. That’s the start of a revolution, man.
In all seriousness, when all is said and done, will the defining pop culture moment of this 2020 pandemic actually be a docuseries about an eccentric Southern man with two husbands, hundreds of tigers and an arch-nemesis who may have killed her husband and fed him to the cats? You bet it will.
“Tiger King” is available to watch now on Netflix.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.