Shark Tale director Rob Letterman is attached to direct a new version of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels from a script by Shrek writer Joe Stillman. The Hollywood Reporter notes that Kung Fu Panda star Jack Black has signed on to play the title role in 20th Century Fox’s live-action re-imagining of the classic political satire masquerading as an adventure tale.
In the movie, Black will play Lemuel Gulliver, a travel writer on assignment in Bermuda when he discovers a hidden island inhabited by tiny people. Scribe Nicholas Stoller (Fun With Dick and Jane) is doing rewrites of Stillman’s script for John Davis and Black’s Electric Dynamite, a shingle he launched with Ben Cooley. Steve Asbell is overseeing production for Fox. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in March.
Letterman’s most recent DreamWorks directing effort is Monsters vs. Aliens, the studio’s first movie designed for stereoscopic 3-D presentation. Set to open nationwide on March 27, the sci-fi comedy’s trailer was recently leaked onto the internet but was promptly yanked by Paramount. Stillman wrote Ilion Animation’s CG-animated sci-fi adventure Planet 51, which Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group is bringing to theaters in the U.S. on Nov 20, 2009.
