Matt Damon officially in talks for Crowe's WE BOUGHT A ZOO

It's been five years since the critics tore Cameron Crowe apart over his Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst starrer Elizabethtown, a movie that didn't fare any better with the public ($26 million domestic from a $45 million budget) and I had heard reports that the failure had hit him hard and he was looking to quit film-making completely. This rumour felt more and more true with each passing year as a new Crowe project kept failing to come to pass, and after helming three of my favourite movies over a ten year period (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky) - I was mourning the loss of a writer/director whose time was seemingly up way too soon. Gladly, retire he has not, and I was delighted to read earlier this year that Crowe had become attached to helm We Bought A Zoo, a 20th Century Fox drama based on Benjamin Mee's memoir of how his young family bought a Zoo in London in response to his wife passing away from cancer. Much like Elizabethtown, it's a movie about characters trying to come to terms with something they're lost, and finding connections with the people around them. Variety are reporting that Matt Damon is in talks to play the lead, and well, perhaps this one is a potential Oscar contender. A Dec 23rd 2011 release date has been set for a while, and it's clear Fox have confidence in this one, and are backing it up with a deal to land the much sought-after A-lister. Ben Stiller had previously been linked and Crowe had been looking to work with the actor for a while (they had a Cameron original script setup to make recently that couldn't get financing) but it looks like Damon is the direction Crowe is going in. Crowe is currently re-writing Aline Brosh McKenna's script (The Devil Wears Prada), and I believe for the first time in Crowe's career he is set to helm a project he didn't initially pitch and write. This may actually be a good thing as Crowe wouldn't touch a project that didn't read out to him so he clearly has a vision for the story, and of course he has of course adapted material before. Vanilla Sky had it's origins in a Alejandro Amenabar Spanish drama. Production is tentatively set for September.