In the movie "We Bought a Zoo," Matt Damon plays a dad trying to hold his family together by doing just what the title suggest, buying and moving with his kids into a rundown zoo that they begin to rebuild. During filming Damon worked alongside animal stars, including snakes, lions and tigers. In one scene he even comes face to face with a giant grizzly bear, which the Bourne Identity star said the experience was quite stunning. "The grizzly bear was an impressive creature" "I mean almost 13 feet tall when he stood up which is just enormous. And he always kind of seemed like he was deciding whether or not he was going to just eat everybody. And there really was nothing that could be done. As for co-star Scarlett Johansson, who plays an overworked zookeeper struggling to keep the business running, it feels quite "surreal" to show up to a set full of wild animals. "It's kind of crazy to come to work and it's 6 AM and you're standing there with Matt Damon and the two of you are starring at three tigers, starring right back at you and everybody's yawning. And you're just like 'this is crazy, there's three tigers over here. Oh my god I'm exhausted.' And the tigers are looking back at you like 'what are we doing here? I need to be sleeping right now.' Yeah, it's a strange kind of reality, a little bit surreal." The film is based on the true story of British journalist Benjamin Mee, who uprooted his family and bought a zoo after the death of his wife. The role of a caring, hands-on family man came naturally to Damon, who has four young daughters. "I really was able to relate in a way that I couldn't have ten years ago. But really it was just sad for me to think about you know a guy trying to do this without a partner and what that would feel like and how he would feel like a failure every day and just because he knew that if she'd been there it would have been that much better. But yeah so at any rate it was very easy to relate to," he said. For Thomas Haden Church, who plays Damon's brother and his voice of reason, the Academy Award-nominee said he couldn't let go the opportunity to work with Damon, one of his favorite actors, and one of his favorite directors, Oscar winner Cameron Crowe. "Love Matt," he said. "Followed his career for 15 years and really admire his choices and I just think he's a remarkable gifted and grounded dude as an actor and also a really great writer. Like he would find things and every now and then he'd have an idea of maybe you want to tweak this a little bit, what if you said this, I mean has a really keen ear for dialogue and how to sort of set bits of nuance and the interaction between the characters. And then Cameron you know is just a legendary writer/director and a guy I really consider to be my generation. He's just a little bit older than I am and I really felt like I had grown up with his movies" "We Bought a Zoo" opens in Taiwan theaters Dec. 23, and has garnered a total of 14.6 million US dollars in North American box office.