Fox has acquired the rights to We Bought a Zoo, a memoir by Benjamin Mee about how the author and his family used their life savings to buy a dilapidated zoo, and cared for 200 exotic animals facing destruction, in the English countryside. Julie Yorn will produce.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the pickup marks the first project set up by Yorn and her unnamed company since the former Firm exec signed a first-look deal with the studio in January.

We Bought a Zoo, published by Weinstein Books in September, tells the story of how Mee, along with his children, 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.

Mee also was the subject of a BBC documentary titled Ben's Zoo

No writer is attached to adapt. No production date is set.