Scarlett Johansson is in final negotiations to star opposite Matt Damon in We Bought a Zoo, the true-life drama that Cameron Crowe is directing for Fox.
The movie is based on a memoir by Benjamin Mee, who used his life savings to buy a dilapidated zoo, replete with 200 exotic animals facing destruction, in the English countryside. Mee, along with his children, had to balance caring for his wife, who was dying of brain cancer, with dealing with escaped tigers, raising endangered animals, working with an eclectic skeleton crew and readying the zoo for a reopening.
Damon has been on board as Mee since the end of June. Johansson will play Damon’s wife, the grounded one in the relationship, and will be seen in flashbacks.
Julie Yorn is producing.
