It has been widely billed as a remake of the Oscar-winning 1964 Disney musical about a magical nanny who takes charge of a pair of perky London children in Edwardian London, but director Rob Marshall, who will oversee the latest big screen outing for Mary Poppins, has revealed the new version will be something altogether different.
Interviewed by Vulture, Marshall said Disney’s forthcoming film would be based on previously unadapted books about Poppins by PL Travers, the creator of the character.
“It is not a new Mary Poppins,” said Marshall, whose other musical films include Into the Woods, Chicago and Nine. “PL Travers wrote eight books alogether. They worked from the first book, and we are working from the other books, not touching the iconic brilliance of Mary Poppins.
“This is an extension. I’m a huge fan of the original, and I’m a very good friend of Julie Andrews, and I hold it in such awe. There is all this new material – it was the Harry Potter of its time – and they were never turned into anything further than that adventure.”
Marshall’s comments are intriguing because, as literary historians and the Hollywood film Saving Mr Banks have noted, Disney did not so much “adapt” as loosely borrow from Travers’ books in 1964. The Mary Poppins imagined by the English author, who detested the film version, was austere, occasionally cruel and is often described by other characters, with her big feet and squinty eyes, as “not much to look at”. The Banks family live in a rundown 1930s home described as the smallest and shabbiest house on the street, rather than an opulent Edwardian townhouse, and Mr Banks has no pocket money to give his children because the bank where he works has been “broken” in the Great Depression.
An adaptation of later Travers books could therefore prove a very different animal to the Julie Andrews-led, sugar-coated and primary colour-stained film developed half a century ago. But at least fans of the original might get to see the veteran English actor on the screen once more.
“She is a very dear friend, and if she could be involved in some way, it would be very special,” Marshall told Vulture. “I know she is very happy that we’re doing it and, after 50 years, feels that it is time.”
