Saving Mr. Banks takes us behind
the development of the Disneyfication of the Disneyfication of Mary
Poppins (how meta!), the movie rights to which author P.L.
Travers was notoriously resistant to sign over.
Emma Thompson plays Travers ('Mrs.'
Travers, as she'll quickly tell you she prefers to be addressed), at
the end of her rope and in need of money, urged by her agent to let
Walt Disney Studios turn her beloved childrens book
Mary Poppins
into a feature film. She is loathe to let her precious creation
become trivialized by the kid-friendly brand, but reluctantly agrees
to travel to L.A. to work with Disney's writers and tunesmiths. Among
her many insistences are that the film not be a musical, not star
Dick Van Dyke, and contain no animation nor the color red. As history
tells us, Disney reneged – or at least changed Travers' mind – on
those stipulations.
