Sticking With The Facts: Steven Dorn Corrects The Record With The New Docu-Series “Tiger Kingdom”

Written in partnership with DN News Desk

Photo Credit: Steven Dorn

After Netflix’s supremely popular docu-series “Tiger King” entered the cultural zeitgeist last year, Tiger King’s exaggerations and lies sunk their teeth deeply into the American populace. This bothered Steven Dorn, a young investor and serial entrepreneur who is a staunch supporter of tiger conservation efforts. This is exactly why Dorn decided to produce a new docu-series tackling Tiger King’s lies and highlighting Doc Antle’s valuable work in the industry, Tiger Kingdom.

Drawing upon his experiences in the world of popular culture, Dorn’s entertainment and marketing eye served him well in this endeavor. Having entrepreneurial projects in many popular public-facing industries such as basketball, film, entertainment, and music, Dorn is an expert in catching the public’s attention. However, Dorn’s commitment to the truth, to dispelling Tiger King’s gross mischaracterizations, and to emphasizing the positive work being done in the industry by people like Doc Antle is the reason why this Couch King Production is generating momentum amongst publications such as People, Elite Daily, and more.

With Antle’s impressive and gorgeous Myrtle Beach Safari complex as the main setting of the film, Dorn’s docu-series is extremely pleasant on the eye to watch. Intermixed between palatial shots of Antle’s landscapes and facilities as well as intimate footage of the tigers, cheetahs, wolf puppies, eagles, elephants, monkeys, chimpanzees, and liger on the premises, Dorn’s docu-series Tiger Kingdom is able to deliver hard-hitting truths and authentic storytelling to the viewer with the perfect amount of mental and visual stimulation.

Not only does Antle and his team illustrate that they are the standard of the industry and do absolutely everything by the book, but they also systematically disprove Tiger King’s gross statements about their work and employees. Antle takes the viewers through many of Tiger King’s claims, small and large, including the comically false rumor that Antle’s neighbors’ houses were actually his girlfriends’ houses, much to the horror of Antle’s neighbors of course.

More seriously, Antle is very keen on disproving the serious accusations made in Tiger King about the number of tigers in captivity in the United States. Throughout much of Dorn’s docu-series, Antle and his staff easily illustrate how the first Tiger King docu-series irresponsibly presented a common internet mistruth as a fact when they claimed that there are more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than there are in the wild.

Juxtaposed between shots of joyful and playful tigers, Antle’s staff explain to the viewer how this lie got so much attention. Tiger sanctuaries are inspected by the federal government multiple times a year, counting the tigers each time they visit. In order to make the situation seem problematic, the Tiger King docu-series took the sum total of all the tigers counted in sanctuaries from EACH visit, thereby counting the same tigers multiple times, which is how they got the 9,000 figure. The docu-series does not actually compare the true number of tigers in sanctuaries in the United States, which is less than 1,700 in 2017, to the total number of tigers in the wild, around 3,000. Clearly, the claim made in the first docu-series was meant to discredit the industry in a false manner.

With these disgusting lies disproven, Dorn is able to dedicate time to highlighting the important charity and conservation work Antle and his team do at the Myrtle Beach Safari and how it’s connected to other conservation efforts. The Myrtle Beach Safari actually helps fund Antle’s Soraya Station located deep in Sumatra. This station is dedicated to protecting wild tigers from various human-generated dangers as well as natural health conditions. The station is home to scientists who study the tigers as well as rangers who spend their days searching the forest in order to remove snares and other dangerous objects that can harm wildlife. Antle’s The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.) is also home to many of his conservation efforts.

Steven Dorn’s docu-series Tiger Kingdom definitively demonstrates that Doc Antle does incredible conservation work with tigers and other animals and that Myrtle Beach Safari is the Ritz Carlton of tiger sanctuaries and exotic animal zoos. We are excited to see this film continue to gain popularity. We will be on the lookout for Dorn’s and Antle’s next moves.