A couple of months ago it was rumoured that Cameron Crowe was thinking about directing We Bought A Zoo, based on Benjamin Mee’s memoir about buying a delapidated wildlife park in the southwest of England. However initially it seemed like it was just go to join the ever growing list of movies Crowe has flirted with since making Elizabethtown, none of which have yet come to fruition.
However now the Jerry Maguire director is locked in and will indeed make We Bought A Zoo. According to THR, he’s already busy rewriting the script by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wear Prada), to better suit his style, with Fox having already set a release date of December 23rd, 2011, suggesting they think it may be Oscar-bait.
You can see why Fox is excited, as it is a truly incredible tale, of the sort that would seem made up if it weren’t true. Despite having no experience looking after animals, Mee bought the delapidated Dartmoor Wildlife Park almost on a whim. He then moved his entire family to Devon, rechristened the attraction Dartmoor Zoological Park, gave the entire thing an overhaul and rehabilitated the 500 animals there, despite also having to cope with the fact his wife’s brain tumour had re-emerged.
Complicating this was that before Mee bought it, the park had been the bane of animal rights activists, who had protested about the poor living conditions of the animals and the safety precautions taken for visitors. The previous owner was charged with 16 offences due to the way he ran the zoo, eventually being found guilty of breeding endangered Siberian Tigers outside of an organised breeding programme, and of keeping them in poor conditions (tigers were found in an old concrete bear pit, with no grass or other amenities). Despite these problems, Mee stepped in after the park was put up for sale but failed to find a buyer, putting the lives of all the animals at risk.
No cast has yet been set, although there are rumours Ben Stiller is flirting with playing Mee.