Patrick Fugit joining Cameron Crowe's 'Zoo'

LOS ANGELES  – Patrick Fugit is reuniting with his "Almost Famous" director Cameron Crowe for the feature drama "We Bought a Zoo."

Matt Damon toplines the movie, to which Scarlett Johansson is also finalizing a deal to join. Fugit's role is being kept secret.

"Zoo" is based on a memoir by Benjamin Mee, who used his life savings to buy a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside - replete with 200 exotic animals - that was facing destruction.

Mee 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.

Colin Ford is playing Damon's son while Thomas Hayden Church is Damon's brother.

Fugit had only a couple of TV gigs under his belt when he was cast as the center of Crowe's Oscar-winning "Almost Famous," released in 2000.

Since then, the actor has appeared in lower-budgetted fare such as "Saved!" and "Wristcutters: A Love Story." He was last seen in "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant."