Blunt, Segel Negotiating to Join Gulliver's Travels

Actors Emily Blunt and Jason Segel are negotiating with Twentieth Century Fox to join Jack Black in Rob Letterman's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, reports VARIETY.

John Davis and Ben Cooley are producing the reimagining of the classic story by novelist Jonathan Swift. Blunt has been offered a role as the Black Widow in Marvel Ent.'s IRON MAN 2, and the two studios are trying to work out her schedule so she can do both films. Production schedules are the hurdle: GULLIVER'S TRAVELS will start lensing in the U.K. in late March while IRON MAN 2 will start in early April in Manhattan Beach, California.

Fox has clout in the situation as they have an option on the actress as part of her deal when she co-starred in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Earlier in the week, it looked like Marvel would have to find another actress, but by Thursday, both sides were optimistic they could work it out.

Black will play Lemuel Gulliver, a travel writer who takes an assignment in the Bermuda Triangle and washes up on Lilliput, an island populated by tiny people. Blunt would play a Lilliputian princess and Black's love interest, while Segel will play Horatio, Gulliver's best friend from Lilliput who helps rescue Gulliver.

GULLIVER will be directed by Nicholas Stoller, who wrote the film with Joe Stillman. Segel also recently lent his voice to DESPICABLE ME, the first film under Chris Meledandri's Illumination Ent. shingle at Universal.