Trailer
Plot summary
London, 1961. Her royalties gone and nothing new written, P. L. Travers needs the money Walt Disney has offered for the film rights to Mary Poppins, but she dreads what his studio will do to her character. Her agent, Diarmuid Russell, reminds her that Disney has already agreed to no animation and to script approval, and she flies to Los Angeles for two weeks of meetings. At the studio in Burbank she sits through script readings and songs, objecting to almost everything: a singing governess, made-up words, the Banks house, Mrs. Banks's name. Between the sessions come her memories of Allora, Queensland, in 1906, where she lived as Ginty with her imaginative father, Travers Goff, and her mother, Margaret.
Cast
- Lily Bighamas Biddy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's central premise is fictionalized: Disney had already secured the film rights, subject to Travers's approval of the script, by the time she arrived to consult with the Disney staff.
- The studio asked the filmmakers to omit any onscreen inhalation of cigarettes, a decision Hanks himself disagreed with, under the company's policy for films released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner. Instead Disney is shown extinguishing a lit cigarette and saying nobody can see him smoking because of the effect it would have on his image.
- Resentful over what she considered poor treatment at the hands of Walt Disney, Travers vowed never to permit Disney to adapt her other novels for any purpose, and her last will bans any future American adaptation of her works in any form of media.
SPOILER
After the premiere Travers reportedly approached Disney and told him the animated sequences had to be removed. He dismissed her request, saying, "Pamela, the ship has sailed."SPOILER
The film shows Travers emotionally moved at the premiere of Mary Poppins, but co-screenwriter Kelly Marcel and several critics note that in real life her show of emotion came from deep frustration over the final product, which she felt betrayed the artistic integrity of her work.- Realising the screenplay depicted the studio's namesake, production president Sean Bailey conferred with Disney CEO Bob Iger and studios chairman Alan Horn, who called the film a "brand deposit," a term adopted from Steve Jobs; the executives weighed buying the script and shutting the project down, turnaround, or co-producing it.
- Hanks grew his own mustache for the role, and it underwent heavy scrutiny, with the filmmakers going so far as to match the dimensions of Hanks's mustache to those of Disney's.
