Banks, who was played in “Mary Poppins” by David Tomlinson. The story flashes back to Travers’ upbringing and complex relationship with her father, who inspired the role of the tormented banker Mr. But Travers didn’t like it and refused to sell any more of the eight novel series to the studio. It paid off–“Mary Poppins” ranks #25 on the all-time top grossers list when adjusted for inflation. It’s safe to say that only Disney would have put his own studio’s resources at risk for such a long, difficult, innovative and risky project. She did not want animated sequences, for example, and the 60ish single woman traveled from London to Los Angeles in 1961 to wrangle with Disney. Before signing away the book’s rights, Travers demanded contractual script and character control. John Lee Hancock (“The Rookie,” “The Blind Side”) directs the script by Marcel and Sue Smith about Disney’s decades-long quest to land the rights to Travers’ 1934 children’s classic–and then to make the movie his way. Thus Harvey Weinstein adds musical numbers with Marilyn Monroe to “My Week with Marilyn,” the upcoming “Hitchcock” tells the how-it-got-made drama behind another 60s classic, “Psycho,” and HBO’s “The Girl” examines the celebrity director’s relationship with Tippi Hedren on “The Birds.”īefore he heads for Broadway, Tom Hanks is starring as another well-known Hollywood celebrity, studio head and weekly “Wonderful World of Disney” host Walt Disney (the first time he has been portrayed in a fiction film) while Brit actress/writer Emma Thompson plays prickly Australian “Mary Poppins” author Travers.

The reason for this backstage trend: films about well-known people allow risk-averse Hollywood to make pictures anchored by brand names they can sell to audiences.

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The book with no words bj novak