Tom Hanks will take on the role of Walt Disney in a new film about the making of the 1964 classic, Mary Poppins. That movie was a major part of my childhood and I’m sure many others’ as well, so this is extremely exciting news! The film, Saving Mr. Banks, has already begun production around L.A., and will “detail the hurdles that Walt Disney jumped through to make a bright and bubbly musical adaptation of Mary Poppins.” The cast includes Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers (the author of the Mary Poppins book of which the film was inspired by), Colin Farrell as the troubled Travers Goff, The Office’s B.J. Novak and more. Below is the official plot summary. The film is set to hit theaters late next year. This is going to be so good!
When Travers travels from London to Hollywood in 1961 to finally discuss Disney’s desire to bring her beloved character to the motion picture screen (a quest he began in the 1940s as a promise to his two daughters), Disney meets a prim, uncompromising sexagenarian not only suspect of the impresario’s concept for the film, but a woman struggling with her own past. During her stay in California, Travers’ reflects back on her childhood in 1906 Australia, a trying time for her family which not only molded her aspirations to write, but one that also inspired the characters in her 1934 book.
None more so than the one person whom she loved and admired more than any other—her caring father, Travers Goff, a tormented banker who, before his untimely death that same year, instills the youngster with both affection and enlightenment (and would be the muse for the story’s patriarch, Mr. Banks, the sole character that the famous nanny comes to aide). While reluctant to grant Disney the film rights, Travers comes to realize that the acclaimed Hollywood storyteller has his own motives for wanting to make the film—which, like the author, hints at the relationship he shared with his own father in the early 20th Century Midwest.
