Matt Damon, here with Scarlett Johansson, is the soulful center of the film.
Cameron Crowe‘s big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel We Bought a Zoo hits theaters Dec. 23.
Matt Damon stars as Benjamin Mee, a grief-stricken dad who inadvertently becomes a zoo keeper alongside Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Haden Church, Elle Fanning and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.
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Damon tells The Hollywood Reporter how Crowe convinced him to be apart of the film in THR‘s Dec. 2 issue.
“He said: ‘I know what you’re going to be afraid of; the bad version of this movie is really a movie you don’t want to be in. That’s what I’m afraid of too,'” the actor tells THR.
VIDEO: Scarlett Johansson and Matt Damon Star in ‘We Bought a Zoo’ Trailer
And that told Damon two things: that Crowe wanted to avoid making the bad movie and that he intended to fight against it with Damon as his brother-in-arms. Crowe was right: Damon didn’t want to make what he calls “the Disney version” of the story about a grieving widower with two children who makes the unlikely decision to buy and restore a dilapidated zoo. “It might be popular, but it wouldn’t be something that I’d be proud to be a part of,” Damon says. (Read the full cover story here)
In a new clip, the actor gets some frank advice from Church, who plays his brother, Duncan Mee.
“You’re drilling yourself into insane debt,” says Duncan,
When Damon’s Benjamin says he’s trying to give his kids an “authentic American experience,” Duncan retorts, “And, it ends with you authentically living on my velour couch with your two children.”
Watch the Yahoo! clip below.
