Tom Hanks Now Getting Serious For ‘Saving Mr. Banks’
EXCLUSIVE: Deadline told you back in February that Tom Hanks was in the mix to play Walt Disney in the John Lee Hancock directed and Kelly Marcel-scripted saga of how Walt Disney waged a 14-year courtship to 
persuade Australian author P.L. Travers to sell him rights to make a film out of Mary Poppins. Now, things are heating up with Hanks to potentially star with Emma Thompson (Meryl Streep was also being courted) for Disney, which in February made a deal to acquire the Black List script, which is set up with producer Alison Owen of Ruby Films. Disney seems a natural place for the script, considering the studio owns many rights from making the 1964 classic film that starred Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and David Tomlinson, the latter of whom played Mr. Banks in the film.
The heart of this script comes from how close Travers felt to her story of a nanny with magical powers. Mary Poppins was highly personal, and reflected hardships in her own life and her relationship with her father, who died when she was 7. Disney finally persuaded her to let him make the film, but she was prickly all the way to the end. While Mary Poppins was lauded immediately, she hated the animated sequences in the film so much that she refused to sell any of her other works to Disney.
I’d rather see the Ryan Gosling Disney biopic from that fake poster the French guy made…
Fine, go see that one, I’ll see this one.
And this kind of brain power, is why the audiences have become brain dead, I understand, he is scared there might be a Script, Or Dialogue or heaven forbid something to think about, OK, go back to your Eye Candy!!!
does anyone really care about Tom Hanks anymore
Nope. Completely overrated & wrong for this role.
How about Sean Penn?
Hank, they are making a film based on that fake poster with Ryan Gosling.
I’d like to see a stronger actor, perhaps one in the realm of Emma Thompson’s caliber play opposite her.
A stronger actor?? Hanks won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars? BACK TO BACK!
Hanks will be great as Disney. Travers is up for grabs – a lot of actresses would be great not just Streep and Thompson. A love story or chemistry it wasn’t or isn’t. She kept the Broadway musical from happening a long, long, long time. It’s almost as if she sold the rights to Cameron Mackintosh before she died just to spite Disney the man not just the company. Just please don’t make it a crass commercial for all things Disney including theme parks and consumer products. It’s a small scale story about two divergent human beings with different and incompatible ideas about ambition it seems to me. In a way you can make the case that the underlying subject is copyright law or the lack thereof. Could be great and I hope it is.
Rich Ross and his team love a challenge. And, if this does not work, it had Tom Hanks and is about Walt Disney. Accountability is covered. Perfect film for Ross & Co.
Um, John Carter was a “challenge” I’m sure RR didn’t love. Perfect film for Ross & Co… to exit on.
We plan on putting Hanks in the Disneyland rocket to the moon ride but he will get stranded in space and he’ll have to save himself before his oxygen runs out. This really happened to Walt so it’s based on a true story. We will also get a new theme park ride from this and it’s a lot cheaper than sending John Carter to Mars that was extremely expensive for us and it did not turn out as well as we had anticipated.
Quit bitching, you bitchy bitches. Tom Hanks is a great actor and will do a great job in the role. Would love to see Meryl Streep involved and although I’d love to see someone else other than Emma Thompson, she’ll be remarkable as well.
You guys do nothing but bitch behind digital rocks so that can cast stones at people. There’s enough negativity in the world, why not say something positive for a change.
“Quit bitching, you bitchy bitches.”
LOVE IT
Well Put…..
Has Tom Hanks made a good decision as an actor in the past decade? A movie set 50 years ago about securing the film rights to a book? This has bomb written all over it. Can’t wait for 2013 when the new Disney Studio Head is blaming the Rich Ross regime for this one.
You don’t know what you’re talking about; this is going to do INCREDIBLY LOUD numbers, for sure. I mean, its about some old dead guy trying to get permission to make a movie most live people under 40 haven’t seen.
Well apparently the Walt Disney movie from the french guy who created the fake poster is starting to be developed. Brian Grazer saw it , took it to Howard and Gosling made a tweet relating to it by saying that his musketeer days will finally come into use.