Matt Damon in Talks to Join Cameron Crowe's WE BOUGHT A ZOO
It looks like Matt Damon might be teaming up with director Cameron Crowe on his new film We Bought A Zoo, based on the memoir by Benjamin Mee. The story chronicles when he moved his family into a run-down twelve-bedroom mansion in the southwest English countryside, that included the 30-acre Dartmoor Wildlife Park, a dilapidated preserve that was home to 200 wild animals.
Damon is in early talks to portray Mee in the film, and I think he and Crowe would make a great movie making team. I'm a big fan of Crowe, I understand that Elizebethtown definitely wasn't his best work, but I think he's still a great director that will make more great films in his career. I'm interested to see what he will do with this film, and I hope Damon comes on board to help him do it.
Damon has got a few films in the pipline such as The Adjustment Bureau, Clint Eastwood's Hereafter, The Coen Brother's True Grit, Contagion, and he's set to play Robert F. Kennedy in a new biopic.
For those of you who don't know what We Bought A Zoo is about, here is the story synopsis:
In the market for a house and an adventure, Benjamin Mee moved his family to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside. Mee had a dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. His friends and colleagues thought he was crazy.
But in 2006, Mee and his wife with their two children, his brother, and his 76-year-old mother moved into the Dartmoor Wildlife Park. Their extended family now included: Solomon, an African lion and scourge of the local golf course; Zak, the rickety Alpha wolf, a broadly benevolent dictator clinging to power; Ronnie, a Brazilian tapir, easily capable of killing a man, but hopelessly soppy; and Sovereign, a jaguar and would-be ninja, who has devised a long term escape plan and implemented it. Nothing was easy, given the family’s lack of experience as zookeepers, and what follows is a magical exploration of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, the power of family, and the triumph of hope over tragedy.
Mee family’s successful efforts at rehabilitating the zoo’s menagerie of ailing beasts was juxtaposed with the steady decline of Mee’s wife, Katherine, who received a terminal-cancer diagnosis.