It looks like Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson are hoping to dust off their Oscar outfits with nominations for Saving Mr. Banks, about Walt Disney’s difficulties getting Mary Poppins author PL Travers to allow him to make a film version.
The film follows how, before signing away the book’s rights, Mary Poppins author PL Travers’ demands for contractual script and character control 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.
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 moulded her aspirations to write, but also inspired the characters in her 1934 book.
The film is due for an Oscar-bait December 2013 release.
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