Disney has been having a lot of success remaking their animated classics lately. But how are they going to fare with long-awaited sequels to classic live-action movies? So far, the word is pretty good. The Mouse House broughtMary Poppins Returnsto the D23 Expo this year and, even though the movie isn’t scheduled to hit theaters for more than a year, they revealed quite a bit of new information from the upcoming return of everyone’s favorite magical nanny. Plus, some pretty amazing sounding footage.
Unfortunately, Disney hasn’t yet released the footage fromMary Poppins Returnsonline yet, but with the movie so far away, that isn’t necessarily surprising. However, viaSuperhero Hype, we have a description of the footage, which sounds like it is going to pay appropriate homage to the original, while doing its own thing. Here’s the description of the footage.
“It introduces the house and the adult children. Then we seeLightning Jackflying a kite on a cloudy day. The clouds part and he pulls the string in, revealing that it’s connected to Mary Poppins, once again flying in from above! There’s lots of quick shots of dance numbers, including a massive chimney sweep sequence with more than a dozen dancers. It ends with Jane asking Michael, ‘Those things that happened when we were kids? They didn’t really happen, right?’ But behind them, we see Mary sliding up the stairwell.”
Seeing Mary Poppins, this time played byEmily Blunt, slide up the stairwell sounds pretty delightful. Blunt took the stage during the D23 live-action movie panel alongside director Rob Marshall to talk a bit about the movie. Blunt said that she watched about 15 minutes of the originalMary Poppins, but realized she had to stop and make the character her own. Though, she did study theP.L. Travers booksclosely and says that herMary Poppinsis maybe a bit more odd than Julie Andrews' take.
“No one is going to out-Julie Andrews Julie Andrews.”
Mary Poppins Returnsis set for release on July 16, 2025, and it seems like the perfect kind of movie for Disney to release on Christmas. Even though the movie is so far away, it has already finished filming and during the panel director Rob Marshall revealed that they are currently in post-production. He was very committed to getting it right, as he also revealed that the actual table from the originalMary Poppinswas used on-set. It was kept at Disneyland’s very secretive Club 33 for decades and Marshall had it flown to London for the new movie. That’s the benefit of making a movie for Disney. They can afford to do expensive things like that just because it’s more authentic, even if nobody would have noticed otherwise.
In addition toEmily Blunt as the titular nanny, the movie also stars Ben Whishaw,Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters and Jim Norton, as well as Disney legends Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury. Even though Disney didn’t release any actual footage yet, they did release a motion poster featuring Blunt as Mary Poppins, which gives our best look at her in character yet. You can check it out for yourself below and be sure to keep your eyes peeled as we will be bringing you all of the big D23 news throughout the weekend.
