'Iron Man,' 'Gulliver' Fight Over Emily Blunt

Friday

30Jan2009

'Iron Man,' 'Gulliver' Fight Over Emily Blunt

Friday, January 30, 2009 at 3:10AM

Emily Blunt is suddenly in such high demand that one studio has been threatening to inovke a contractual clause to keep her out of the claws of a rival company. Blunt, who amazingly enough, plucked an Oscar nomination out of The Devil Wears Prada, has been picked by Marvel to be its Black Widow in the upcoming, slightly troubled, and overcrowded Iron Man 2.

But, you see, that's a Paramount movie. And Fox, which released Prada three years ago, may not use part of Blunt's agreement to wedge her out of the Iron Man movie and force her into a new big screen version of Gulliver's Travels. I can't see how she would make that much difference to either film, frankly, but it was threat alert orange there for a couple of days.

Fox now tells Variety it's likely Blunt will be able to do both projects. Black Widow's a great character (or at least, a fun one with a lot of potential on screen), but I'm suddenly more interested in Gulliver's Travels than I was before. It's still not the soap opera Marvel is making out of its Iron Man pre-production, but let's face it: Gulliver's Travels is a classic tale, and the update doesn't sound too bad. Minus Jack Black. Oh, there's always a catch, isn't there?

Black would play a travel writer visiting the Bermuda Triangle, and then he lands not on the island in Lost but rather the isle of Lilliput, where everyone is very, very tiny. I'd make an Alan Ladd joke here, but there's hardly any use in that. Anyway, Blunt would play Black's eventual love interest, which proves how fictional this story really is.

The interesting thing about the head-to-head between Gulliver and Iron Man is that their release dates are already set in stone: May 7, 2010 for Iron Man 2 and July 9, 2010 for Gulliver, so you can see how the projects might overlap and cause this tug-of-war over Emily.

Colin Boyd |

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Reader Comments (2)

FYI: Emily Blunt did NOT "pluck" or otherwise get an Oscar nom for The Devil Wears Prada, even if she did heist all her scenes from Anne Hathaway...

Saturday, January 31, 2009 |

JMK

My mistake - it was a Golden Globe nomination.

Monday, February 2, 2009 |

Colin Boyd

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