Matt Damon buying a Zoo

Matt Damon

Matt Damon is currently in talks to star in We Bought A Zoo .

Directed by Cameron Crowe, the film is based on the memoir by Benjamin Mee, which is an account of how the author and his family built up a zoo using their life savings.

In the end, their English countryside enclosure featured 200 exotic animals who were all facing extinction.

Crowe’s flick looks to be a similar kind of family drama as the tome, with Mee having to care for his cancer-stricken wife and their children. Meanwhile, the everyday life of running a zoo included escaped tigers and working with minimal help.

Damon would no doubt take the lead role (let’s get him to wrestle a tiger! then capture it using a makeshift tiger-catching device made out of straw and paper!), and if anybody can tame wild beasts we're pretty sure he can.

We Bought A Zoo is set to start shooting in January to be released on 23 December 2011.

Could this be a change of pace for Damon?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.