Saving Mr. Banks
Where her book ended, their story began.
Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Production
Budget
$35 000 000
Revenue
$112 544 580
Director
Scenario
Sue Smith
Composer
Producer
Philip Steuer
Actors
Emma Thompson
P.L. Travers
Tom Hanks
Walt Disney
Colin Farrell
Travers Robert Goff
Paul Giamatti
Ralph
Ruth Wilson
Margaret Goff
Jason Schwartzman
Richard Sherman
Bradley Whitford
Don DaGradi
Annie Rose Buckley
Ginty
Short description
Saving Mr. Banks follows the British author P.L. Travers as she travels to Los Angeles in 1961 at the invitation of Walt Disney, who has spent years trying to secure the screen rights to her Mary Poppins books. Travers proves a stubborn and exacting guest, resisting the song-and-dance treatment Disney's team has prepared and objecting to one detail after another, while memories of her childhood in Australia and her relationship with her father surface alongside the negotiations. The standoff between the author and the studio forms the film's central conflict.
John Lee Hancock directed from a screenplay by Sue Smith and Kelly Marcel. The film sits between The Blind Side and The Founder in Hancock's filmography. Emma Thompson plays Travers and Tom Hanks plays Disney, with Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Ruth Wilson and Jason Schwartzman among the supporting cast.
Made for a budget of 35 million US dollars, the film took about 118 million US dollars worldwide. It holds a rating of 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 175,000 votes and 7.3 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of around 3,600 votes. The critics' rating stands at 7 out of 10 from 262 reviews, close to what audiences recorded.
What's left behind the scenes
- Some of the actual 'Oscar' statuettes can be seen in scenes in Walt Disney's office.
- 124 pages of various drawings created between 1961 and 1964 were provided to the filmmakers, including sketches, rough drafts, storyboards, design layouts, and advertising posters.
- The film was shot almost entirely in Los Angeles. Key locations included Disneyland in Anaheim; the TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theatre) in Hollywood (where the premiere of 'Mary Poppins' took place in 1964); the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, which has been in operation since 1939 (the 1964 film was shot entirely on this lot); and the 40-square-kilometer Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, which replicated the Australian landscape of the early 20th century.
- The Walt Disney Archives provided over 150 digitized images of various characters from that era – souvenir guides to Disneyland, postcards, catalogs of merchandise, stickers, and invitations to the film premiere. All of this was used in the filming of the movie.
- To accurately capture Walt Disney's manner of speech, Tom Hanks listened to archival recordings of Disney in his car and practiced the voice by reading newspapers.
- After receiving the film’s script, Disney representatives retrieved over 500 pages of various documents from the archive – ranging from initial storyboards and the screenplay to correspondence between key members of the film crew.
- According to the film's plot, Pamela Travers, played by Emma Thompson, opens the door to her hotel room in Beverly Hills and discovers the room is filled with all kinds of Disney-themed souvenirs. The room became a source of pride for set decorator Susan Benjamin, who filled the space with everything she could get her hands on – from a two-meter-tall Mickey Mouse to balloons. In turn, Sean Bailey, president of film production at The Walt Disney Studios, decided to do the same with Emma Thompson. He personally “decorated” her room in a Los Angeles hotel with all possible souvenirs. About a week later, Bailey received a thank-you card from Thompson, in which she also inquired – was a hidden video camera installed in the room to capture her genuine astonishment?
- Since Colin Farrell, who played Pamela Travers’ father, only filmed scenes for the Australian flashbacks, he did not have the opportunity to meet the other actors playing characters in 1961.
- The first American-British project of Walt Disney Pictures, which created this film in collaboration with BBC Films.
- Walt Disney began his “crusade” for the rights to adapt Pamela Travers's book *Mary Poppins* in 1938. It took Disney 20 years to reach an agreement with the author. Nevertheless, the rights were eventually transferred to the studio, and the film was made.
- The father of "Mary Poppins" author P.L. Travers was a banker. He served as the prototype for one of the main characters in her book – Mr. Banks. It is to him that the fictional nanny comes to the rescue.
- To prepare for the role, Tom Hanks visited the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco several times and spoke with some of Disney's relatives, including the famous animator's daughter, Diane Disney.
- Richard M. Sherman, who, along with his brother Robert, wrote the songs for the film "Mary Poppins" (1964), served as a consultant during the filming of "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013). His stories about that time, as depicted in the film, were truly invaluable to both the actors and the crew. He recalls that Walt Disney particularly loved the song "Feed the Birds." The maestro fully appreciated the song's key idea – that giving love isn't so difficult. Disney often called the Sherman Brothers, asking them to come by and sing the song again. They would come to his office and give impromptu concerts. Ultimately, this ritual repeated almost every Friday.
- To achieve an even greater resemblance to her character, P.L. Travers, the author of "Mary Poppins", actress Emma Thompson obediently allowed herself to have a perm, forgoing a wig. Tom Hanks, in turn, grew his own mustache to more closely resemble Walt Disney.
- While working on the film, the filmmakers gained access to a unique source: the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. The museum was opened in October 2009 by Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney, and his grandson, Walter Elias Disney Miller. The exhibition is managed by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a non-profit organization. Covering an area of over 3,700 square meters, it houses samples of cutting-edge technology, historical materials, and artifacts documenting Disney’s achievements.
- This is the first film from Walt Disney Studios to feature a character of Walt Disney himself.
- In 2011, Kelly Marcel's screenplay was recognized as one of the best unsold screenplays in Hollywood. And in early 2012, Walt Disney Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the screenplay.
- Actor Jason Schwartzman is 32 years old – exactly the same age as his character, Richard Sherman, was in 1961 when this story took place. Actors B.J. Novak and Robert B. Sherman were also "the same age" in 1961 – they were 34.
- The actors and crew had the opportunity to listen to approximately six hours of audio recordings of meetings between P.L. Travers and the crew of the original "Mary Poppins" (1964) film, provided by the Walt Disney Studios Archives. The negotiations were recorded from April 5th to 10th, 1961. You can clearly hear the author expressing her peremptory judgments and suggestions. Her interlocutors included songwriters Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, screenwriter Don DaGradi, and the studio’s story department head Bill Dover (who also organized Travers’s trip to America).
- While on a scouting trip to Australia, director John Lee Hancock and producer Alison Owen visited Maryborough, Queensland. This town was where Pamela Travers spent her childhood.
- Recreating the pavilion of The Walt Disney Studios, Disneyland park, and the premiere of "Mary Poppins" (1964) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which took place in the early 1960s, the crew reviewed over 500 photographs stored in the Walt Disney Studios Photo Archive (part of the Walt Disney Archives). The photographs captured corridors and offices of the building, the amusement park from various angles, and aerial shots.
- The film’s art directors visited the "Treasures from the Walt Disney Archives" exhibition at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Among other exhibits, it featured elements of office furniture from that era. The art directors measured and photographed all the interior items in order to recreate exact replicas, including Walt Disney’s desk, side tables, and bookshelves. Archive staff even provided the art directors with the signage from that time that had been displayed in the Disney Studio premises. The same signage adorned the corridors in the film. The film’s decorators were also able to carefully study photographs of Walt Disney’s official and home offices as they were in the 1960s. The founder of the Walt Disney Archives provided precise measurements of each piece of furniture and a detailed inventory of all the interior items.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
