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 take a sequel to “The ‘Burbs” over this film.
zzzzzzz I’m sick of Tom Hanks’ act. So unwatchable. He ruins every film he’s in for the past decade.
a) Hanks is wrong for Walt. Animation historian Ernest Rister writes that Walt was an abused child, was beaten by his father repeatedly, daily, to enforce discipline on the farm and later, the paper route. Like actors before and since, Walt was motivated via childhood pain. It shaped his whole life. Tom Hanks is the wrong man to play such a hardened, internally conflicted man. Personally, I’d give the role to Nicholas Cage, as he’s the right age and he has the crazy quirky charisma of Walt, and the ability to suggest something went really, really, wrong a long time ago, and he’s acting out as an adult because of it.
b) If P.L. Travers had issues with her father, then Walt and Ms. Travers had something in common.
c) If anyone had the right to make a movie out of Walt Disney’s life, it would be Steven Spielberg, who has sprinkled his films with tips of the hat to Walt, but who also has issues with parental pain and isolation.
d) Ron Howard making a movie about Walt Disney plays into the wrong tropes about both artists. No one wants to see Ron Howard making a movie about Walt. They’d go to see Spielberg or Gilliam make one, though.
Finally a well thought out and legitimate comment! I agree that Tom Hanks is wrong for the role. Studio mentality is bankable star, and Tom Hanks has bank. Not as much as he used to, but still bank.
Nicolas Cage is an interesting choice and one I hadn’t thought of; however, now that you mention it he feels like sort of a “Duh, why didn’t I think of that?” choice. Cage would be perfect visually, characteristically and emotionally.
And I wouldn’t see a Ron Howard film about Disney. Spielberg yes, Columbus yes, even Gilliam. But, very few others could handle this topic well.
is it just me or dose Tom Hanks make a good Walt Disney in any other heads too? And what about Roy Disney, is he going to be added into the film as well because I know that Wal and Roy were close.
This entire movie is fiction and not terribly compelling fiction, at that. I am the son of one of the Sherman Brothers. My Dad and Uncle took Ms. Travers’ amusing but disconnected and far from famous chapter book and, with their original screen outline and song score help forge it into a film classic and a popular book. I have read the script and the writer makes it seem that the Pam Travers came to town and saved the film. In fact, she was a road bump at that point, hating everything you see and hear in the film. She ended up, actually, going for the money — a considerable sum for the time — and still hated the movie at the premier. The writer will have you believe Travers came up with all the beloved characters and songs and moments in the film and staunchly fought Disney to get her vision across. It was Walt Disney, my Dad and Uncle, Bill Walsh and Don DeGradi who made “Mary Poppins” the classic film it is. This film, I feel, reflects the whole last regime at Disney that has lost touch, not only with propriety, but also with what an audience will respond to. True fans know the true story. Other people won’t care about this oddball woman and her alcoholic dad. What does that have to do with Mary Poppins? It’s ludicrous. The families of all the true creatives that made that film what it was are astounded and insulted by the stick characters playing out our parents’ roles.
Look, I love the Disney Company. I grew up there and continue to work there. I hope that the next chapter of Walt and Roy’s company will go back to the roots of the Disneys and, at the same time, find a way to propel the company into tomorrow, the same way Walt always did. My Dad and Uncle wrote the song, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” in honor of Walt and in the tradition of my grandfather (composer) Al Sherman’s optimistic, forward-looking anthems. I know America and the world is still hungry for fantasy and adventure — films, shows and TV that are uplifting and optimistic. We’re all looking to find that beacon of hope.
“Saving Mr. Banks” is just another in a line of missteps for the Disney company. I look forward to an innovative artist and businessman or, even better, businesswoman to come and rescue the Disney franchise. I believe Bob Iger understands this and shares my feelings. I trust he will find the proper person to take the reins.
jcs
BRAVO!!!!! BRAVO SIR!!!
I was wondering how this story was going to be handled. Sucks if it’s the way you describe it. If so, then this film is going to be a total lie. There are RECORDINGS of “Mary Poppins” story sessions with Ms. Travers which fully illustrate what a pain in the ass she was to deal with. She was an oddball, out of touch with any kind of reality, and if the Poppins film had been done her way, it would have been a laughingstock, a travesty and probably done irreparable harm to the Disney company.
If Disney makes this film the way you describe, I sure as hell won’t go to see it. I’m afraid I don’t share your confidence about Mr. Iger, however. In my opinion, bean-counting “brand”-loving CEOs like him have been the ruin of the company.
you very clearly have not read the script as nothing you purport to be in it is anywhere on the pages.
I want to see Morgana Davies playing the daughter, she’ll be brilliant as usual. Yes I want Morgana xxxx