Geek-Culture News
Tom Hanks is playing Walt Disney in ‘Saving Mr. Banks’
Posted 10:45 am on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012 by John 'Spartan' Nguyen
This is great news for you Disney fans out there. Disney has announced that production has started today for Saving Mr. Banks, a film that follows Walt Disney’s twenty-year journey into acquiring the film rights for P.L. Travers’ popular novel, Mary Poppins.
And of all the actors to portray the man behind the mouse? Tom Hanks. I see no problem with that casting. This will be the first time that Walt Disney will be portrayed in a dramatic film. And who’s playing P.L. Travers? Emma Thompson.
When Travers travels from London to Hollywood in 1961 to finally discuss Disney’s desire to bring her beloved character to the motion picture screen (a quest he began in the 1940s as a promise to his two daughters), Disney meets a prim, uncompromising sexagenarian not only suspect of the impresario’s concept for the film, but a woman struggling with her own past. During her stay in California, Travers’ reflects back on her childhood in 1906 Australia, a trying time for her family which not only molded her aspirations to write, but one that also inspired the characters in her 1934 book.
None more so than the one person whom she loved and admired more than any other—her caring father, Travers Goff, a tormented banker who, before his untimely death that same year, instills the youngster with both affection and enlightenment (and would be the muse for the story’s patriarch, Mr. Banks, the sole character that the famous nanny comes to aide). While reluctant to grant Disney the film rights, Travers comes to realize that the acclaimed Hollywood storyteller has his own motives for wanting to make the film—which, like the author, hints at the relationship he shared with his own father in the early 20th Century Midwest.
Colin Farrell (Total Recall, Daredevil) will be playing Travers’ dad, Goff. I’m guessing he’ll be in flashback scenes along with using old makeup effects for his older scenes.
This will definitely be one of those heartfelt movies, since John Lee Hancock is directing. His previous projects include The Blind Side and The Rookie. Shooting location includes Los Angeles, Disneyland, and Disney Studios in Burbank. Shooting will finish Thanksgiving, 2012, and will be released in theaters in 2013.
Source: Disney
John “Spartan” Nguyen is the editor-in-chief at Nerd Reactor and is based in Orange County, CA. He is a graphic designer and illustrator.
