Emily Blunt May Be Practically Perfect As The New Mary Poppins

A few months ago Disney revealed that they were working on a new Mary Poppins movie, with Rob Marshall directing. Since then many having been waiting for the news that Emily Blunt had been offered the central role – as she’s just about the only person around who seems a good fit – and now it’s happened, as Variety reports she’s in talks for the movie.

While the 1960s movie was mainly based in the first of Travers’ books, the new movie will explore Mary’s further adventures with the Banks family and beyond as illustrated by Travers’ seven additional novels. Disney has been keen to stress that this shouldn’t be seen as a sequel, instead being a completely new take on the characters set 20 years after the original. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray, Smash) will write the songs, and the film apparently has the support of original Mary Poppins co-composer, Richard Sherman.

There is a possible issues with Blunt taking the role though, which is that Disney is apparently keen to get it into production as soon as it can, but the actress is currently pregnant, so they’ll have to see whether they can shuffle their schedules around that.