Animals rarely enter Eric Goode’s documentaries simply as animals. They become mirrors for obsession, identity, commerce, and the strange ways humans justify what they do. In Monsters of God, that mirror turns toward the global reptile trade, tracing 75 years of a world where fascination can blur into exploitation. What begins with a love for creatures evolves into a far darker examination of the systems built around them—and the people who have made those systems part of their identities. It is a story about animals, but perhaps even more so, about us.

Behind that sprawling investigation are filmmaker Eric Goode and executive producer Jeremy McBride, who spent years following characters, institutions, and uncomfortable truths across a world that rarely offers clean heroes or villains. With nearly 200 interviews, more than 1,500 hours of footage, and years of research shaping the series, Monsters of God becomes less a conventional wildlife documentary than an autopsy of human fascination itself. Goode and McBride sat down with NetflixJunkie to discuss obsession, complicity, the reptile trade, and what happens when the creatures we fear become the ones forcing us to look inward.

Adiba Nizami: You've described Monsters of God as your most personal project because you were once part of the same world that you're now documenting. As a filmmaker, how did you decide where self-examination should end and where your investigation should begin? Were there moments when your own history became a creative obstacle rather than an advantage?

Eric Goode: In a very simple way, it takes one to know one. There was an advantage in knowing the world and being able to speak fluently about it with these people. We could talk in Latin and scientific names about the animals. We could talk about where they came from and what they do. So that was easy.

In terms of self-examination, it's fair for someone to say, "You're a hypocrite. You also love keeping reptiles." In my case, I like keeping turtles and tortoises, but I love all reptiles. Through this process, it's important that I tell people I'm not trying to be the animal police and stop your kid from having a pet reptile, bearded dragon, gecko, or snake.

I am trying to convey the message throughout the story about the wildlife trade, about how reptiles are a big part of the wildlife trade globally, and that we should care about them and not treat them like disposable pets and just replace them when they die. We should care about what's happening to the planet and the extinction crisis we're living through today. Some may think that I'm the most hypocritical person in the world because I'm doing a story showing the dark side of reptile smuggling.

When I was a consumer of reptiles, I was part of the problem. I bought reptiles from some of the very people we have in this story. I hope that, in the end, we were fair to all sides. I hope people can see that I'm not trying to say I'm better than anybody else and that I was also part of this process.

Adiba: The production reportedly spans more than a decade of research and relationship-building. From an executive producer's perspective, what were the biggest challenges in keeping such a long-gestating documentary creatively consistent when the world, and sometimes the subjects themselves, changed dramatically during production?

Jeremy McBride: There's a certain level of fatigue. We were also doing a lot of things at once, which kept it interesting and allowed us to take breaks to allow some of those access challenges to work themselves out. This was a project that was very overwhelming. We had so much content. We ended up with close to 200 interviews, over 1,500 hours of footage, tons and tons of archival, 50,000 pieces scattered throughout the series, and close to 25 editors over the course of the six years, making it in and out along the schedule to further advance it.

I think it was a matter of balancing the goals and the vision of the project, dealing with all of our stakeholders and the chaos of production, which is always really complicated, especially filming during COVID, and keeping everyone busy and making sure that we were continuing to advance the project. We'd have these breakthroughs, and that would be exciting. Then we'd have some setbacks, and that'd be really challenging. You have to solve a lot of problems constantly in these kinds of roles and keep things moving.

Eric and I have this great way of working. We're always moving, always trying to continue on, trying to keep a good attitude, staying persistent, and making sure that everything works out the way you want.

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Adiba: Your documentaries, from Tiger King to Chimp Crazy and now Monsters of God, often reveal that the real story lies with the people who build their identities around animals. What have you learned about human obsession that surprised even you after spending decades inside these worlds?

Eric: We cast a wide net. We don't just find a story immediately. We were filming all kinds of people in the animal world: the guy who owns the most rhinos in the world, people who hunt sharks in the ocean, taxidermists, trophy hunters. Then, when we find a character who really stands out and something about that person draws us in, like Joe Exotic in Tiger King or Tanya in Chimp Crazy, we start getting more into that world. We were fortunate that a story unraveled. But it starts with finding something, and maybe it's instinct, but it's usually the characters first.

In the end, when we make these stories, there's a silver lining, hopefully, for the animals. So it is about the animals in the end. But in order to tell a story about animals that may make a difference, you need to entertain people. Once they finish watching the story, they realize, "Wow, I was educated," and maybe they want to do something to save tigers or do something about chimpanzees that are kept in solitary confinement.

Hopefully, in this story, by watching it, maybe at the end you realize, "Wait a minute, we're living through an extinction crisis, a man-made extinction, the sixth extinction." Reptiles are disappearing. Turtles and tortoises are one of the most endangered groups of animals on Earth. But you need to have a story that's entertaining to get people to watch something like this if they don't understand the issues. If you just make an orthodox, normal type of wildlife documentary, you're only going to preach to the converted, and you're not going to make real change. So we look for these characters.

We look for a story. But in the end, we want to make a difference. Through that storytelling and finding these colorful characters, I think you can get a lot of people to watch something, which is our goal, so that we can make real change. We're not the animal police all the time. In this story about reptiles, we're not trying to prevent people from having one. This is also broader. It makes you think about your impact in a period of time. We're analyzing 75 years of history in this particular trade that is contributing to a larger problem.

Jeremy: Reptiles are feared. Snakes are feared. The show hopefully makes people appreciate and love them differently than they came into watching the series. Some people won't even watch it. We've had people be turned off. They won't even watch it because of the phobia or fear they have of snakes.

Adiba: Several of the people featured have histories involving international trafficking, organized crime, and dangerous wildlife. Beyond the obvious physical risks, what were the biggest editorial or legal conversations behind the scenes? Were there interviews or sequences that almost did not make it to the final cut because of those concerns?

Jeremy: There's a lot of stuff. Thankfully, with the support of HBO and great legal counsel that likes taking risks like us, we're able to include a lot of the things that we want. But there were people that didn't make it. We're not constrained. Obviously, all of our work is pretty crazy, so we don't have those constraints, nor do we tend to operate or follow them. We want to make sure we do our best to get the story that we want to tell out.

That said, there are some pretty far-out challenges that we've gone through, including ambushing people and using undercover cameras in states that don't allow for certain consent of filming without parties knowing. There were a couple of really important moments that weren't consequential in the end to the point that this series kind of summarizes, but would have been great to have in. There was some stuff involving American zoos that we had to be very, very careful around.

We've had a great dialogue with the American zoos, and that's been very positive. Getting that right was more important than trying to chase something sensational or something that was going to make it a little spicier. Eric and I have sometimes had tension over including certain things. Ninety percent of the time, it ends up being the best version of what it's meant to be. Sometimes something makes it in, and it's better than I ever thought it was going to be. Other times, we have to take things out.

Adiba: The documentary reportedly implicates not only traffickers but also respected institutions like zoos and even regulatory systems. When you're exposing failures across every level of the ecosystem, how do you avoid creating a story where audiences simply conclude that everyone's guilty and therefore no one is actually held accountable?

Eric: Life is messy. There's a lot of gray in all of this. Law enforcement isn't always right. Many of the things that they do, or some of the things they do, don't work. We should acknowledge that when it doesn't work. The zoos were complicit. I'm, by the way, accredited by the same accreditation as the American zoos. So I'm guilty. I'm part of the zoo culture.

Zoos are much better today, but sometimes you bite the hand that feeds you. We're all complicit sometimes in this story, and there's no clear good guy or bad guy sometimes. So I would just leave it at that. By the way, you're in India, the country that has the most snake bites of any country in the world. The most are from cobras, from people in the rice fields.

Reptiles are feared in India because you live in that country. I love India, by the way.

Jeremy: I think part of that is intentional. We want to show the scorecard of the last 75 years on an issue that people have somehow justified in society and culture, and really look at it today and see if we still have the same thinking that we once did. We were talking about this earlier with people. This is a country where, 100 years ago, we kept humans in a cage. The Bronx Zoo is an exhibit.

Eric: Or look at Ventara in India. Where do you think they're getting their animals from? We all have something. No one's perfect in this story.

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What did you think of the themes uncovered in Monsters of God? Let us know your take in the comments.