Tom Hanks to portray Walt Disney in new movie ‘Saving Mr. Banks’
Tom Hanks will portray Walt Disney in a movie examining Walt Disney’s 23-year pursuit of the film rights to the popular novel “Mary Poppins.”
Production has recently started on the movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” which will look at the partnership Disney had with author P.L. Travers.
This is the first time that any one has ever depicted Walt Disney in a dramatic film.
According to the Walt Disney Company, the movie will be filmed in the Los Angeles area, with key locations to include Disneyland and the Disney Studios in Burbank. Filming should end around Thanksgiving 2012 and be released sometime in 2013.
Emma Thompson will portray Travers, who had stringent demands for contractual script and character control which would “circumvent not only Disney’s vision for the film adaptation, but also those of the creative team of screenwriter Don DaGradi and sibling composers Richard and Robert Sherman, whose original score and song (Chim-Chim-Cher-ee) would go on to win Oscars at the 1965 ceremonies,” according to the company news release.
Here is the movie synopsis from Disney: “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 aid). 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.”
Also in the film is Colin Farrell as Travers’ doting dad, Goff; Ruth Wilson as his long-suffering wife, Margaret; Rachel Griffiths as Margaret’s sister, Aunt Ellie (who inspired the title character of Travers’ novel); and 11-year-old Aussie native Annie Buckley as the young, blossoming writer, nicknamed “Ginty” in the flashback sequences.
John Lee Hancock directs based on on a screenplay by Kelly Marcel.
