Zookeepers seem quite popular in Hollywood at the moment, with Kevin James signed up to play one in a live-action/CG flick simply called The Zookeeper (where he discovers the animals can talk), while Cameron Crowe is preparing We Bought A Zoo, about Ben Mee, who bought a rundown wildlife park in Devon, despite having no experience looking after exotic animals.
Now comes another one, although this is actually more a war/holocaust story than a zoo tale. Variety reports that Brit based Scion Film has snapped up the rights to Diane Ackerman’s non-fiction book, The Zookeeper’s Wife and set Angela Workman to write to script. The tome chronicles how Jan and Atonina Zabinski, who were the keepers at the Warsaw Zoo, turned it into a safe haven for Jews during the war, after the Nazis invaded Poland. Persecuted Jews were hidden in cages and sheds (most of the animals were dead), as well as the Zabinski’s house.
Although it may be a difficult movie to get financed in the curent economic climate (numerous period films have be planned then scrapped in the past year), the book has been an enormous success, and it’s certainly a story worth telling on screen.