Wild Speculation: What Is This Zoo Movie About?

Universal Pictures are keeping the premise of their upcoming sci-fi comedy Zoo a secret for now, but Cinematical made a stab at guessing just what it might involve.

Here's my own wild speculation. Let's see how well I do when the truth is revealed at a later date.

I think the film probably involves a young couple (first-romance age teens) who are abducted by aliens. They are taken away and placed in a strange kind of alien zoo, containing species from across the galaxy (or galaxies). However, they either manage to escape, or a human third party (cute kid?) who stowed away on the abducting craft manges to free them, and they take it upon themselves to liberate all of the animals. I'm going with the cute-kid stowaway option.

Cue some late-in-the-second-act-dillema when it is revealed that many of these species are endangered, and what's more, they like to eat eachother, so maybe springing them all from their cages wasn't such a good idea. This can show us a few sides to the reality of zoos, and make the film educational for the little ones.

Poignancy is added when the alien zookeepers - a benign lot after all - reveal that they considered man endangered too and whizzed us off for our own good.

At the point that the two main kids think they have no chance of getting back home, there's talk of them branching the human race off on a new home planet. Teen sexual awakening is covered in typical Goonies fashion.

Once the humans are home, they probably either keep a cute alien in secret, or have to part with one in a tearjerker scene. There's material in ET that can be ripped off as the basis for either.

And that's my off-the-cuff guess. There's something a bit Explorers about the images I have in my head, I admit.