Plot Summary

When Walt Disney's (Tom Hanks') daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers' (Emma Thompson's) "Mary Poppins", he made them a promise - one that he didn't realize would take twenty years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles, California to hear Disney's plans for the adaptation. For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all of the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Richard M. Sherman (Jason Schwartzman) and Robert B. Sherman (B.J. Novak), Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn't budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp. It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing movies in cinematic history.—Walt Disney Pictures