‘Tiger King’ Filmmaker Reveals His ‘Monsters of God’ Title Is a Bait & Switch

Loved Tiger King but could have done without all the fur, warm blood and live birth? Monsters of God is the documentary series for you.

Eric Goode, the filmmaker behind both, as well as Chimp Crazy (he’s also a very successful hotelier), grew up obsessing over reptiles, much like the other characters in his new HBO series. He drew the line at smuggling, whereas his human subjects in Monsters of God did not. That makes them (and possibly you, too) the monsters.

The title of the Goode Films/A24 series (in association with Central Pictures) “really refers to the people, not the reptiles,” Goode told The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom call ahead of Thursday’s premiere. “We’re monsters of God, and we always separate ourselves from the animal kingdom through religion — where we say humans have dominion over all life whether it swims, crawls or flies, and all of life is sort of meant for us to do what we want with it.”

If you love animals and nature, as Goode truly does, human beings are the most dangerous animal on Earth. But this writer is not the only one who missed the quiet-yet-powerful intent.

“A lot of people in the reptile world are confused by the title and are thinking, ‘We’re vilifying the reptiles by calling them monsters,’” he continued.

Goode borrowed from author David Quammen’s book Monster of God, which focuses on four apex predators: lions, tigers, crocodiles and bears. It wasn’t exactly the heist of the century — Goode and Quammen sit together on the board of directors for an organization called Rainforest Trust, so Quammen’s permission was granted.

Near the very end of the series, which won the TV Premiere Audience Award at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, one of its participants/villains, Tommy Crutchfield, serendipitously refers to the serpents as “these Monsters of God.” Goode says he didn’t purposely plant the phrase for Crutchfield, but acknowledges that they have filmed together so much over the past decade and a half that he “may have said it at some point.

“I remember in real time, when he said it, it almost drew tears in his eyes,” Goode said of the reformed reptile trafficker.

Yes, Crutchfield used to really suck (not as much as fellow snakes Anson Wong or Mike Van Nostrand, but more so than Hank Molt — all are in the docuseries). He’s sorry about all of that.

Fellow Monsters of God executive producer Jeremy McBride (Josh Safdie is among the dozen or so others) was just “along for the ride with these eccentric, obsessive people,” he tells THR. “It’s a really fraught world with a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of unintended consequences.”

It is also filled with some of the prettiest creatures we haven’t yet made extinct. Goode is partial to the big lizards: the “monitors, Komodo dragons, big iguanas,” he says while wearing a hat dedicated to his love of tortoises (he’d add them to his list). McBride’s favorite is the Gila monster, one of the only venomous lizards in the world. They’re also partially responsible for you finally fitting into your favorite pair of old jeans.

“The cool thing about them, they’re pretty docile. They can clamp and bite you, and really significantly injure you. But the glands were extracted and used for this early development of GLP-1s,” McBride said. “So this very thing that can kill you can also basically save your life.”

The guys wanted to get that story into the series, they said, but it just didn’t fit anywhere.

Though Monsters of God generally shorthands its featured creatures with “reptiles,” it also includes amphibians, like frogs and gnarly toads — the bumpy kind that makes you run away from lawn-mowing duties in suburban New Jersey.

Goode, in all his wisdom, thinks I should not be afraid of these monsters of Satan.

“The reason you should not be afraid of frogs is there’s never been an incident in the world where a frog has ever hurt a human being or killed a human being — other than a poison arrow frog, which are only in South America and Central America,” Goode said, clearly lying to me. “They’re tiny, and I don’t even know if they’ve killed anyone.

“A toad, on the other hand — yes, some toads have glands on the back of their head that people are using… to get high. All I would say is: Don’t eat toads. Frogs you can eat. Frog legs are yummy. They eat them in France and they taste like chicken,” he added. “There’s very few cases of anyone dying from a amphibian. Much more people die from car accidents. You don’t ever have to worry about a toad attacking you.”

Then you mow my lawn, Eric.

Finally, I asked Goode to rank his documentaries in terms of the subjects’ damage to the natural world. I didn’t get a ranking, but that does not mean Goode ducked the question.

“Honestly, I think it’s difficult to rank them. It’s all one big ball of wax, more interconnected than people realize. Joe Exotic didn’t just have tigers; he had bears, primates, reptiles, birds — everything. It wasn’t just chimps in Tonia’s world either — she had otters, wallabies, etc.,” he said. “Tiger King, Chimp Crazy, Monsters of God — the labels make it look like separate animal worlds, but it’s all interconnected, even if the motivations and interests behind each one differ.”

“Monsters of God is about invisibility — a smuggling economy most people never see, doing damage to wild populations you can’t even count,” Goode continued. “If we’re talking biggest offenders, none of my docs actually get there — that’s bushmeat and wildlife consumption around the world, which dwarf all three films combined and feed right into the same system. Haven’t made that film yet.”

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The five-episode Monsters of God premieres Thursday, Aug. 6 at 9:00 p.m. Subsequent episodes will debut Thursdays at the same time. The series will be available to stream on HBO Max.