But a $50m movie has not aided a Hollywood ending. It is little wonder the film rights to Mee's story were snapped up. While Mee battled to reopen the zoo, his wife, Katherine, died of a brain tumour, aged 40, leaving him to raise their children, Milo, 11, and Ella, 9.
Instead of heading into the local village he got into another enclosure and picked a fight with a tiger. On the fourth day of Mee's ownership, their jaguar, Sovereign, escaped. This decision caused one of Mee's brothers to fall out with the rest of the family and take legal action against them. Their purchase saved 200 animals from being shot. Mee took over the crumbling zoo in 2006, after persuading his mother, Amelia, to sell the five-bedroom family home in Surrey and buy – with the same £1.2m asking-price – the run-down house on the edge of Dartmoor that happened to come with a zoo. Is anyone here? "They'll be along shortly," said the zoo curator Colin Northcott. Making a Hollywood movie has proved simpler than persuading the council and highways authority to erect the correct brown signs for the tourist attraction. Through a warren of Devon lanes, the zoo is not easy to find. There is one problem: it's been open for an hour and there is not one customer. A lone wolf sits in the picturesque woodland while meerkats and monkeys bounce around in their enclosures. Solomon the lion gazes imperiously from his hilltop enclosure, while tigers Vlad and Stripe go on the prowl. On a sunny March morning, his 33-acre zoo appears idyllic. If it wasn't for their film, which premieres in London on Thursday night, the family-run zoo would have gone bust.Īt the beginning of this month, Mee's company credit card was rejected when he tried to buy milk for the cafe because he only had £45 of credit left. Damon, Scarlett Johansson and the director Cameron Crowe – of Jerry Maguire fame – pitched up just in time.
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