Cameron Crowe has spent a few years licking his wounds after Elizabethtown failed to grasp the imagination (or the box office dollars, for that matter), developing the odd project – like Hawaiian-set Ben Stiller comedy drama Deep Tiki – that never got off the ground, and working on a documentary about Pearl Jam. But now it appears he’s found something else to be passionate about again: adapting Benjamin Mee’s memoir We Bought A Zo****o.
Vulture is reporting that Crowe is circling to direct a movie based on the book, which follows Mee, who in 2006 was The Guardian’s DIY columnist, as he takes on the ultimate challenge: renovating a country manor and the surrounding Dartmoor Wildlife Park.
Mee and his family moved in and successfully pulled off the job, helping the 200 animals living there, but the story was also touched by tragedy when his wife, Katherine, learned she had terminal cancer.
The first draft of the script has been written by The Devil Wears Prada’s Aline Brosh McKenna, though it’s understood that Crowe – no slouch in the scripting department himself – will give it a polish before it heads into production. And that’s assuming it does head into production. He needs to get the film going first.
We’ll find out more about this possibility when we can, but this is surely good news – we need new Crowe films in the world.