‘Mary Poppins Returns’ covers EW, details and photos tease new film
Disney is bringing Mary Poppins back and fans got a big preview of Mary Poppins Returns with a new EW cover and story.
Emily Blunt replaces Dame Julie Andrews as P.L. Travers’ famous title character, while Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, will play street lamplighter Jack in the new film.
Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury and Colin Firth also have roles in the movie, directed by Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Chicago) from the script by Finding Neverland writer David Magee. Pixie Davies, Joel Dawson and Nathanael Saleh star as three new Banks children.
Dick Van Dyke, who starred in the original classic musical, is confirmed to be back, filming a scene in London.
“I just love the movie and I wanted to be in it,” he said. “They made me up anyway, even though I’m old enough to do it without the make up.”
Mary Poppins Returns will tell the story of an older Jane and Michael Banks and Michael’s three children, who are visited by Mary in the aftermath of a “personal loss” in Depression-hit London.
EW notes that Mary Poppins Returns “picks up 25 years after the events of the first film, fast-forwarding to London’s mid-1930s economic slump, the actual time period of Travers’ books. Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane has become the warm, loving home that banker and artist Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) shares with his wife and three children. But after the sudden death of Michael’s wife, the Banks family is shattered — even enthusiastic aunt Jane (Emily Mortimer), now a fervent union organizer, and long-time housemaid Ellen (Julie Walters) can’t help lift spirits — and so in time, the once-blossoming home is on the verge of foreclosure.”
“The bar is so high for this,” says Marshall, who also directed the Oscar-winning Chicago. “But to be able to walk in the footsteps of this beautiful story about a woman who brings magic to this family that’s looking for wonder and hope and joy in their lives… I feel a great responsibility and reverence every day. We all feel it. We’re just lifting it up to get there with the right intentions behind it.”
Meryl Streep will play a cousin of Mary Poppins in the upcoming Disney sequel, the wife of Arthur Turvy. Topsy will welcome the young Banks children to her world during her own solo musical number. Everything in Topsy’s world is upside down and opposite, giving the kids a brand new perspective.
EW describes Firth’s character as “surprisingly genial — if still properly, enigmatically English.”
Mary Poppins Returns is scheduled for release Christmas Day 2018.