New images from Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo have gone online.  Based on Based on the memoir by Benjamin Mee, the film tells the story of a man (Matt Damon) who decides to buy and renovate a zoo following the death of his wife.  The movie notable not only because of it's solid cast (Scarlett Johansson, Patrick Fugit, Elle Fanning, J.B. Smoove, and Thomas Haden Church) but because it's Crowe's first film since 2005's fiasco Elizabethtown.  The images make the movie look a tad sappy (as zoo animals plus uplifted families tend to do) but I'll withhold further judgment until a trailer hits.

Hit the jump for the images along with what Crowe and Damon had to say about the film.  We Bought a Zoo opens December 23rd.

Crowe tells USA Today about his reaction to the failure of Elizabethtown:

"It helps as a journalist, because you are able to talk to the people whose work you've followed, and you realize that everything doesn't always hit on all cylinders," he says. "I know it came from the right place. And when people like the movie and connect to it, they are connecting to something you honestly wanted to put out there."

He adds that he's spent the past six years working on other scripts, "Just stockpiling stuff to do later."  He compares it to the break he took after Almost Famous to write his book Conversations with Wilder.  He's also got two music documentaries on the way, Union about Elton John and Leon Russell's recent collaboration, and the upcoming Pearl Jam Twenty.

As for Damon coming on board, he said that while Crowe gave him a screenplay but warned him not to make a decision based solely on the script since Crowe hadn't made his changes yet.  Instead,

"He gave me the film Local Hero," the 1983 cult charmer about a wheeler-dealer American oil company rep who is transformed by his time spent in a small Scottish town. "And he gave me about 15 songs, a lot of Neil Young and Eddie Vedder. I actually took the music, put it on my iPod and went for a run in Central Park. Then I read the script. I thought to myself, 'This is absolutely something I want to be in.'"

Cameron Crowe gave someone a mixtape?  Get out of (Elizabeth)town.