![]() I knew what this character needed, and Emily checked off every single box.” Also, he notes, “she’s just incredibly British.” Their star in place, Marshall and DeLuca hired David Magee, the screenwriter of Life of Pi and Finding Neverland, as well as the songwriting team Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who’d done the Broadway musical Hairspray, and put them together in a New York City hotel room to hash out a storyline and some music. “If I hadn’t just worked with Emily on Into the Woods, there would have been an enormous search,” says the director. But I knew they were going to do it anyway, so I wanted to make sure I was a part of it.Ĭasting wasn’t so difficult after all, at least not for Marshall. So when they came to me, I felt kind of protective of it. “It was the first film I saw as a child,” he says. I mean, who could you even cast? But we were all pretty excited.”įor Marshall, director of movie musicals including the Oscar-winning Chicago, the only thing more terrifying than making a Poppins sequel was the idea that somebody else might make it. ![]() “We all felt we’d have to be really careful about it. “Rob was finishing up Into the Woods for Disney, and we were talking about wanting him to do another picture at the studio, and the conversation naturally went to, ‘What about Mary Poppins?’ ” recalls Bailey. Not long after that, in 2015, the idea for a new Poppins movie came up again during a lunch at the Disney commissary with president of production Sean Bailey, Marshall and producers John DeLuca and Marc Platt - but this time, with the Travers estate cooperating, the sequel took off like a kite. Banks to get made with full estate approval. They were cordial enough, for instance, for Saving Mr. Michael Eisner fired Katzenberg in 1994, Travers died in 1996, and by the time Alan Horn took over at Disney in 2012, relations between the studio and the Travers estate had thawed considerably. “Also, Travers had all these rules: ‘Mary Poppins cannot wear red because everyone knows Mary Poppins never wears red.’ It just became impossible to deal with her. But still, it didn’t make sense,” says Kaplan. She suggested a sequel set just one year after the original, but with the older actress still playing the part. Travers hated everything about the idea, except for Andrews. They pitched her a next-generation plot line, with the Banks kids grown up and Andrews playing an older Poppins. “And Mary Poppins was the most guarded jewel of them all.” Kaplan flew to London to meet with Travers, then in her 80s, on five occasions - twice bringing Katzenberg along - trying to nail down a sequel. “When he came to Disney in the 1980s, Jeffrey looked in the vaults to see what jewels he could find,” says Martin Kaplan, who was vp live action at Disney from 1987 to 1999 (he’s now a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication). “So when Rob Marshall called to offer me the role, my first reaction was pretty much abject terror.” “It’s such a nostalgic film for so many people,” says Blunt, who didn’t want to be the one to mess all that up. After five decades of theatrical rereleases (in 17 different languages), scores of TV broadcasts, multiple home video sets ($180 million from DVD sales alone) and countless digital downloads, it may well be the most-seen, best-loved children’s film of all time - a jolly movie memory for billions around the world. ![]() It was Disney’s biggest box-office smash of the 1960s, grossing $31 million domestically, about $250 million in today’s dollars - a windfall that helped bankroll the construction of Walt Disney World. The original film is the crown jewel of the studio’s live-action library, the most honored movie in its history (13 Oscar nominations, with five wins, including best picture, best actress and best original score). And not only for Blunt - who was taking on a role that Julie Andrews had been practically perfect for in every way - but also for Disney and director Rob Marshall. Travers’ umbrella-toting magical nanny to the screen was a task not even a shovelful of sugar could have made any less daunting. It may have been more than just a fear of flying.
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