Jack Black Will Be the Latest to Star in Gulliver's Travels

It's a story nearly three centuries old that's been made into films, TV series and cartoons over a dozen times. So, can comic actor Jack Black breathe new life into Gulliver's Travels? Clearly, the 20^th Century Fox studio hopes so, as Black will star in the latest movie version of the Jonathan Swift satire.

Black will play Lemuel Gulliver, a travel writer sent on an assignment in the Bermuda Triangle who wakes up on the island of Lilliput, where the residents are all six inches tall.

Swift's original story, a commentary on 18^th century government and religion, is one of the classics of English literature. Widely considered to be the forerunner of the modern novel form, it has been continually available in print since it was first published in 1726.

The story has been adapted repeatedly for the screen. The earliest film version was by pioneer French filmmaker George Melies. A Russian director tackled the project in 1935, making the first-ever feature-length stop action animation film. Here in America an animated version was released in 1939. The film, from early animation master Max Fleischer's studio, was Paramount's attempt to compete with the success of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Later, actors as varied as Richard Harris and Ted Danson played the prototypical "fish out of water" role.

For the newest version, due in theaters in July 2010, Black will star opposite suddenly-hot comic actor Jason Segal of TV's How I Met Your Mother and the hit films Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man. Segal will play Horatio, a tiny Lilliputian who befriends Gulliver and is the main love interest of the Lilliputian princess.

The princess will be played by actress Emily Blunt of The Devil Wears Prada and Sunshine Cleaners. Her casting caused a stir when she had to give up a plum role in next summer's Iron Man 2 because of her Gulliver schedule. The Black Widow role in Iron Man - and likely several additional films - went to Scarlett Johansson instead.

"I'm playing the Princess of Lilliputia, who is confined to her role as princess and must conform to their manners and the ways she's been brought up in court," Blunt told MTV. "Jack Black comes in and just stirs all of that up and lights rockets under everyone and everyone gets a new lease on life and a new direction. So he comes in and contemporizes the whole palace setup, which is pretty funny."

So it appears the film will be more the kind of broad comedy Black has become famous for than the increasingly dark tale that unfolded in Swift's original telling. Behind-the-scenes, Gulliver certainly boasts a solid comedic foundation. It was written by Nicholas Stoller, who directed Segal in Sarah Marshall, and Joe Stillman, who co-wrote Shrek. It is being directed by Rob Letterman, the man behind Monster vs. Aliens, and Black himself will be one of the film's producers.

For a big star with an oversized personality like Jack Black, playing Gulliver may be the ultimate larger-than-life role.

Eric Ditzian, "Emily Blunt on How Jack Black Will Stir Up Gulliver's Travels", MTV.com