Matt Damon Eying Crowe’s ‘We Bought a Zoo’

Published by Jeff Leins on June 24, 2010

20th Century Fox and filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) are still working on bringing Matt Damon on board for the drama We Bought a Zoo, an adaptation of Benjamin Mee’s memoirs.

Damon has been circling the project for weeks now, but now he’s in early talks for what seems to be new territory for the 39-year-old actor, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Mee’s story is about how he coped with his wife’s terminal brain tumor diagnosis and eventual death by buying a zoo and refurbishing it with his children into a sanctuary for endangered animals.  (I hope they’ve set aside a few pelicans from the Gulf of Mexico.)

Perhaps Damon, now a married father of two, is looking to add a family-oriented tearjerker to his resume rather than the brooding serious types or brawny heroes we’ve watched him own on screen for quite a while.

It’s been five years since Crowe’s Elizabethtown underwhelmed on an epic scale, so there’s a certain amount of pressure on him as well.  It must be tough to be reminded your best work was last century.  People yelling, “You complete me, Cameron Crowe!” or simply standing silently with a boombox over their head playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

We Bought a Zoo is already scheduled for December 23, 2011.