‘Travels’ With Jack: Black Set for 18th C. Lit Update

Jack Black aims to be the big man in Lilliput.

Variety reports that Jack Black has signed on to play the lead role in Gulliver’s Travels. Rob Letterman is directing. Nicholas Stoller, director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Joe Stillman, Shrek writer, adapted the 18th century Daniel DeFoe novel into a contemporary setting.

The oft-told tale has lately come to be seen as a children’s story, mainly due to a cartoon version from the 1930s, I think,  and filmmakers preference for only one episode of the book, Gulliver’s adventures amongst the Lilliputians, a tiny race of people he finds when shipwrecked on an island. However, that’s only one small section of the book, which as a whole was a sharp-edged satire of 18th c. society and mores.

So what’s this version going to be like? Well, let’s see how Variety describes it:

Story centers on Lemuel Gulliver, a free-spirited travel writer who, on an assignment to the Bermuda Triangle, suddenly finds himself a giant among men when he washes ashore on the hidden island of Lilliput, home to a population of industrious, yet tiny, people.

Well, what do you know? Another version that just concentrates on the Lilliputian episode. Again, apologies to the Brobdingnagians and the Houyhnhnms, who don’t seem to make it onto the big screen very often.