WAMG At The SAVING MR. BANKS Press Day

By Melissa Howland | December 19, 2013

Two-time Academy Award®–winner Emma Thompson and fellow double Oscar®-winner Tom Hanks topline Disney’s “Saving Mr. Banks,” inspired by the extraordinary, untold backstory of how Disney’s classic “Mary Poppins” made it to the screen. This past  month WAMG attended the SAVING MR. BANKS press conference where Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell, Jason Schwartzman, BJ Novak, Bradley Whitford, director John Lee Hancock, writer Kelly Marcel and producer Alison Owen discussed making the film, Nanny McFee, and scarring grandchildren with Winnie the Pooh.

When Walt Disney’s daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins,” he made them a promise—one that he didn’t realize would take 20 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 to hear Disney’s plans for the adaptation. For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, 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 films in cinematic history.

Please welcome, if you will, Colin Farrell, writer Kelly Marcel, B.J. Novak, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, director John Lee Hancock, Bradley Whitford, and producer Alison Owen. That’s-that’s not gonna go well.

Emma Thompson climbs over the table to get to her seat. The crowd laughs. 

EMMA THOMPSON: I think we’ve all had a little bit too much attention.

TOM HANKS: What a perfectly choreographed entrance that was.

EMMA THOMPSON: Yes, it’s worked so well.

Hi. Emma, and anybody else who’d like to comment, why do you think Pamela Travers, who can be so hurtful and so mean, is so much fun, and kind of irresistibly adorable?

EMMA THOMPSON: That is the first time I’ve heard her called irresistibly adorable, but I’ll take it. Um, is it-is it not rather nice for all of us, who’ve been so well brought up, and we’re all so bloody polite all the time, Americans particularly, um, to see someone being rude? It’s bliss, isn’t it? I think we act quite a lot of the time in, um, uh, uh, sort of conflict with what we really feel.

TOM HANKS: That’s a stupid thing to say.

EMMA THOMPSON: Exactly, there you go. How much did we enjoy that? We loved that.

TOM HANKS: So, so rude to celebrate rudeness.

EMMA THOMPSON: We could carry on like this for a long, long time.

Miss Thompson and Mr. Hanks, you’re playing characters where one’s got a very high public profile, one less well-known. What were the little breadcrumbs that you used to follow the trail to get the essence of who these people were, rather than to try to do imitations?

TOM HANKS: Uh, there is a bit of a, of a vocal cadence and a rhythm that Mr. Disney had that took a while to figure out. But a lot of the-the-the little anecdotes that we found specifically from the likes of, uh, Richard Sherman and were already in the screenplay. For example, Walt’s cough. Uh, you know, Walt smoked three packs a day, and Richard Sherman writes, and this was in the screenplay as well, he said, you always knew when Walt was coming to visit your office, ‘cause you could hear him coughing, you know, from down by the elevator. So you’re able to put that kind of stuff into it, and it just ends up being, you know, one of the delightful cards in the deck.

Emma, for you?

EMMA THOMPSON: Well, I liked that you used “breadcrumbs,” you know, ‘cause, I think it makes me think of Theseus and the minotaur, and the fact that P.L. Travers was so fascinated with myth, and was a searcher all her life. So, it was very breadcrumb-y, my search for her. Um, she went everywhere, you can imagine, she was like going into a maze. You know, and round some corners, you’d find this terrible monster. And round another corner you’d find a sort of beaten child. So, she was the most extraordinary combination of things. I suppose that was the scary thing, because in films, I don’t know whether my colleagues would agree, but we often get to play people who are emotionally, or at least morally consistent in some way. And she wasn’t consistent in any way. You would not know what you would get from one moment to the next. You could have had a very close moment with her on one day, and I got this from her friends, and then the next day, they might have gone to see her and she would have treated them as if… it’s like that moment that Kelly created and invented with Paul Giamatti’s character, where she says, you know, “You’re the only American I’ve ever liked.” And he says, “Oh, really, how fascinating, why? And j-, can-, will you-, can-, will you tell me why?” And she says, “No. I don’t want to tell you any more about that. Now you’re just asking too much. Go away.”

TOM HANKS: And you know what you do with breadcrumbs don’t you? [SINGS] “You feed the birds, tuppence a bag…” [OTHERS JOIN IN] “Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag…”

My question is for, uh, Emma. Um, you, I found it a little bit funny, you, you’ve won an Oscar for a screenplay, and you have played a nanny. And here you ar-, uh, “Nanny McPhee?”

EMMA THOMPSON: Yes…

Yes, okay….

EMMA THOMPSON: [OVERLAPPING] No, no, no, I was, that was my “I, I’m intrigued” face.” Sorry.

Oh, my God. Okay. Well-

EMMA THOMPSON: Did it come out wrong? Sometimes that happens.

I was, like, “Did I totally just mess that up?” All right. Heart attack. Okay. Well, my question is, here you’re playing a person who is helping in a screenplay about a nanny, and I’m wondering if that (playing Nanny McPhee) at all affected your approach to this film?

EMMA THOMPSON: I’ll tell you what is interesting. P.L. Travers likened, um, well, she used to talk a lot about Buffalo Bill. And while I was playing her, and discovering what she was – well, while I was researching her, I found out that she referred to Mary Poppins in very similar ways. She had understood that there was a spot of Zen mastery in the way in which she worked, but also that – and this is my theory – but I think that, because women have traditionally been locked out of the superstructures or the power structures that we all live in – Buffalo Bill’s a very good example, because I’ve always thought that “Nanny McPhee” was essentially a Western, only set in a domestic environment. And she felt the same way about “Mary Poppins.” So there’s a ver-, there’s a very real connection in the sense that, you know, the outsider comes into the place where there is difficulty and solves the problem using unorthodox methods, and then must leave. That’s a Western. And because women don’t have that kind of power, the Western form, which is a myth, an essential myth, what she would have called an essential myth, uh, uh, emerges in the female world in the nursery. Um, so that’s what comes to mind when you-, I don’t think I’ve answered your question at all. Do forgive me. But it, it was the interesting thing I thought that I could tell you.

Hi, my question is for Colin. Your rapport with little Annie Rose Buckley is genuinely beautiful. How did you go about creating that special bond with her?

COLIN FARRELL: A stick. A stick. [laughs] Um, alternated with sugar cubes. Which I got from the horse trainer. [laughs] No, she was just a dream, Annie, to be around. I think people say you shouldn’t work with children or animals, but you must only work with children, because you work eight hours a day. She was a dream. She’s, she from what I could tell, she didn’t exude ambition, and sometimes kids do, of course, and which is not to say she’s not ambitious, and that would be fine if she was, but she didn’t exude ambition, and she didn’t seem to be too fazed by any of it, and she was just a really, really sweet presence to be around. And, to see how beautiful and open her face was on the monitor and just in being around her was kind’a like, it was the most exquisite of canvases, upon which the later life of P.L. Travers was born, as she witnessed what her father was putting himself through and thereby putting everyone else in the family through as well. I mean, I have to accept some responsibility for the emotional inconsistency of P.L. Travers. I think that probably the apple fell a little bit close to the stump on that one.

For Miss Thompson and Mr. Hancock, and anybody else who might want to weigh in… P.L. Travers made it very clear in the film what she thought of Disney’s “Mary Poppins,” but how do you think she would have responded to SAVING MR. BANKS?”

EMMA THOMPSON: You take this one. Go on.

TOM HANKS: Silently.

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: Yeah.

BRADLEY WHITFORD: Dead. [LAUGHTER]

TOM HANKS: Too much? [LAUGHTER]

BRADLEY WHITFORD: Just to the edge.

EMMA THOMPSON: You know what? I’ve been asked this question a few times, and I reckon this is a woman who kept on saying, “I don’t want anything. I don’t want a biography, I don’t want anything like that, I don’t want anyone to do or know anything about me.” Meanwhile, she kept everything she wrote and sent it to-, for the archives at Brisbane University. So she felt, I’m certain, that she was an important contributor to the artistic, to the culture, and wanted, I think, to have it preserved. And I think that’s what she would say about this, is, “Absolutely ridiculous film. Uh, I h-, [STUTTERS] n-n-n-no relationship whatsoever to what was happening. Uh, but, you know, uh, it’s about me. And, uh, um, at-at last. Uh, and I thought that the clothes were really rather nice.” I think that’s what she would have said.

EMMA THOMPSON: Don’t you think? (To John Lee Hancock)

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: Oh, God, yeah.

Mr. Hanks and Miss Thompson, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the challenges of playing such iconic characters, research you did, talking to people who knew them, and how that helped you inform your performances.

TOM HANKS: There is a lot of anecdotal information that kept coming to us. There were people, uh, who knew Walt, and they still have access to the studio, ‘cause I think they still have their cards that let them onstage. They searched us out. Richard Sherman was a never-ending, literally, never-ending, fountain of stories, of facts, of anecdotes, of bits and pieces of everything that had happened. And Diane Disney Miller, his daughter, uh, gave me al-, uh, unlimited access to the archives and the museum in San Francisco. Made a couple of visits there. So I had, I had a lot of video and audio that I could work with, which, the only handicap there was a lot of it is Walt Disney playing Walt Disney. Uh, but even in some of that and plenty of others, there’s an ocean cadence to the man, and that sense that he, he had great – he believed everything that he said about his projects. And he completely embraced the possibilities of wonder in the movies that he was going to make as well as the rides he was going to come up with, and the things that he was going to build. So I had a lot, I had a great road map in order to search it out.

Emma and Tom, both of your characters are pretty obsessed with this book and this character. I was wondering, in your own lives, is there something that you have just either wanted to do as an actor, or you were just obsessed with the book and the character, you love it, and hope maybe to produce it or something like that? Or just love it? Is there somebody like that?

EMMA THOMPSON: I, well, just off the top of my head, which is probably the best place to start. For me as a child, it was always Sherlock Holmes, with whom I was deeply in love, and who I wanted really to be. Um, but that’s the problem, isn’t it, if you’re a female, that a lot of the heroic models are, in fact, male. So, you, you know, one of my first questions to everybody as I was getting older is, “What’s, who’s the female hero? Who is she? What does she do? What does she actually do?” Um, and, so, anyway, yeah.

TOM HANKS: I always wanted to play Lestrade of Scotland Yard, just ‘cause he’s kind of a buffoon that gets to wear a uniform, and I thought, “Well, that would be fun.” So maybe we got something.

EMMA THOMPSON: Yeah. Let’s do it.

Hi, Mr. Hanks, it must have occurred to you this is your second “Saving” movie, and you’re a funny guy. Did you have any thoughts on that, and will you do a third “Saving” movie?

TOM HANKS: I like to think of it as a trilogy. There’s gotta be some era of history that we can explore. It seems to be moving forward. I’d like to play, “Saving John DeLorean.” Uh, I, no, I have no idea. That’s the, John DeLorean invented the car, okay, never mind. I got nothin’, I did my best that, uh…

Emma, this is a movie about words, but one of my favorite things with actors is watch them when they have a scene that doesn’t have dialogue. In LOVE ACTUALLY and this, you have two memorable scenes where you have no dialogue. Is that harder on you, because there are no words to fall back on, or is it easier for you to, sort of, get those emotions across because you don’t have to worry about the words?

EMMA THOMPSON: Oh, scenes without words are bliss to do, reacting scenes are-are wonderful to do. I think we’d all feel the same way about that. I mean, not because one is frightened of words, or learning words, or using words, of course not… but just because, it’s a different kind of – you’re not so active somehow. Uh, yes. It’s not even that you’re passive, but you’re just responding and that’s, the scene that you’re talking about at the end, John, we didn’t know how to do that quite, ‘cause it is quite a-, she’s having a huge reaction, I mean, huge. It’s like an elemental reaction she’s never had before in her life. So, what was interesting to me about it was the thing that made it work was the clip from “Mary Poppins.” That’s what did it. And, so that’s what I was responding to. So, that was nice.

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: You know what was fascinating about that, though, ‘cause I remember that day obviously very clearly in the Chinese Theater. And, we were talking about it and how this would progress, and the number of cameras, and you told me, “Um, I’m not sure where the bridge will be built, but once I know, I can cross it again and again.” And I thought that was just fascinating, ‘cause I’m not an actor, but to witness that in terms of, “I’m not sure where that’s going to be, or how it’s going to happen, but once I know how the bricks lay and how we cross the river, I can go there again and again,” which-, and she did, which was amazing.

EMMA THOMPSON: I’d forgotten that.

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: You’re lying.

EMMA THOMPSON: Oh, no. I’d just forgotten that as-, how interesting. Gosh. Who knew?

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: [OVERLAPPING] Yeah. Yeah.

I have a question for Tom Hanks. You have two grandchildren, and that is the Mr. Banks side of you that we don’t know. So, do you take them, uh, to Disneyland, for example? What is like to be Tom Hanks as a grandfather?

EMMA THOMPSON: Old. [Laughs]

TOM HANKS: Uh, we did go, I had taken them to Disneyland on the day that we shot in Disneyland. They came, and an interesting thing happens as a grandparent – that you see no reason whatsoever that your granddaughter shouldn’t be delighted to take a ride on the Winnie the Pooh Adventure. It’s Winnie the Pooh. It’s fun. It’s Pooh Bear. It’s Kanga, and Roo, and Owl. It’s Christopher Robin. It’s gonna be a blast. She’s gonna remember this the rest of her life, her ride on Winnie the Pooh’s Great Adventure. My granddaughter was terrified by the noise, the big spinning bears. She is now-, haunted for the rest of her days by this first image of Winnie the Pooh in a loud, short, herky-jerky ride that her grandfather forced her to do on the day he played Walt Disney in Disneyland. That is just a sample of the fantastic job I do as a grandparent. Thank you. [Laughs]

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate all of you. The film is, to paraphrase Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. Now, along the same Disneyland vein, John Lee, Alison, for only the third time in history a film has been shot partially in Disneyland. What kind of challenges did that face, and how did the rest of you feel about the opportunity to do something as iconic as that, that is rarely done, and then also shutting down the Chinese and part of Hollywood Boulevard for another major sequence?

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: We were very prepared for Disneyland, kind of military precision. They were very helpful down there. We knew when we could come in before it opened, and we knew at 9:17 we needed to be on Main Street, and here by there, and we carefully went down there and scouted it many, many times with lenses, because if you would, you know, pan this far over here, it would be something from 1981, pan to the left and it’s 1969. So, trying to solve those problems without spending money. Um, and you know, being there on Main Street before the park opened and the sun is just coming up, and everybody’s moving stuff around, and I remember a moment there where you’re so worried and prepared for the day, and you’ve got that ahead of you, “Are we gonna do it, we gonna get everything done?” But then there was just that moment with the sun coming up, and I thought, “Damn, this is cool. I got a great job.” And then I looked over, and there was Tom sitting there, and I go, “This is Walt Disney and-, it’s all too great.” So, it was fantastic.

Obviously, Mary Poppins meant a lot to Walt Disney. I’m curious to know for everyone on the panel, what did Mary Poppins mean to you before making this film?

TOM HANKS: Jason Schwartzman.

B.J. NOVAK: Uh… should I go? Do we have anything? You want to coordinate something for a second?

JASON SCHWARTZMAN: Uh, yeah. Well, it meant a lot to me, this movie, growing up. I saw it a lot of times, and, in fact, I knew most all the songs from the movie. In fact, that’s what I remembered the most, I think. It’s funny just how much when you’re little, a movie and things can affect you and, when I got the part in the movie, and I started looking through archives and photos, and you’d see all these behind-the-film, behind-the-scenes, snapshots of the movie being made, and it was only then that it occurred to me that it was shot in Burbank. Um, because I experienced it as a young person thinking it was in England, and it was only recently that I realized that it was all made up. That’s how deep into my body it had gone, and how much I believed that it was all real. And in many ways, I wish I hadn’t ever seen those photos. Do you know what I mean? Like, you don’t want to see Jaws, how, you know, Jaws is. Like, there’s photos of guys smoking cigarettes by Jaws? I wish I had never seen those photos. And I wish I had never seen the Cherry Tree Lane on Burbank Boulevard, ‘cause it’s deep in my-, so, it means a lot to me, this movie. I loved it very much.

B.J. NOVAK: We talked last night about this, because I thought I had seen “Mary Poppins.” I knew all the songs. I knew the characters. I had absorbed it without ever having seen it. I didn’t realize that till we all went to your house and watched it, and I realized there were so many scenes, and complicated,- and dark shadings, and directions that I had never associated with that film. It’s a very-, the film itself is so much, odder than we remember and so much more complicated, let alone the story of the film when you know the context of it. So, it was something for me, and we talked about this, all these Disney films, they feel like they’re in your DNA-

JASON SCHWARTZMAN: Yeah.

B.J. NOVAK: Um, growing up-, these songs, the Sherman Brother songs especially, you just feel they just came from heaven fully formed. It’s so interesting to see that people, we went to the archives and saw drafts with different lyrics and different script pages, and it’s so odd to think that this ever could have been any different. And that was so interesting about making this movie, seeing all the drafts-

JASON SCHWARTZMAN: Yeah.

B.J. NOVAK: Let alone the scenes that I had never even known were there.

What have you learned about Walt Disney after doing the movie that you didn’t know before, and how challenging was for you to have to look and sound like him?

TOM HANKS: Uh, we had the most discussed, photographed, analyzed, diagrammed-, tested mustache on the planet. I mean, I think actually, documents went to United States government to discuss the angle of the shave… how much mustache was going to be there. [Laughs] I don’t look too much like him, but there is a line, there is an angular figure you can get from, by way the boxiness of the suits, and, the playing around with various pieces of hair in order to get there. I had a little bit of luck in that this, Walt Disney at this time in his life was, is very much already Walt Disney. He is the accomplished artist, industrialist, that he was. The nature of the surprises came down to the fact-, was that really, coming from Diane, about how much of just a regular dad this guy was. I mean, Disneyland itself came about because he used to spend every Saturday with his two daughters. And after a while, here in L.A., he ran out of places that he could take his two daughters. There were pony rides over where the Beverly Center is now, and there was the merry-go-round in Griffith Park, but after that, that was it. And he was sitting eating peanuts on a park bench in Griffith Park and the girls were on the merry-go-round, he said, “God, there really should be place dads can take their daughters on a Saturday in L.A.” And from that, Disneyland was born. So, that connection that he had, through very tight family. His brother Roy, his Mom and Dad who were a part of his life as soon as he had money, that was it. Um, and also the fact that he was, sadly, a victim of the times. He smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and he died of lung cancer. Um, that’s just another one of the grim realities of the, that’s the way the world operated back then.

Mr. Hanks, as a storyteller-, that you are also a director and producer. How do you relate with the conflict of Mr. Disney that wants to tell this marvelous story that maybe he has in his mind, and the songs, and he has to deal every day with the author? How do you relate with the struggle of creating something, and in the day-by-day as a filmmaker?

TOM HANKS: Well, as everybody here is, more or less some version of a person who has tried to see a story brought to its-, you know, it’s something, and it starts in your head, and you see possibilities for it, and it’s just one damn thing after another. I mean, it seems like you’re always comin’ across somebody like, you know, this hell-in-a-gasbag right here that just says “No-no-no-no-no, it’s not gonna happen.” and Walt Disney, at this point was pretty much used to getting his way because everybody loved him and he’s the guy who invented Mickey Mouse. Listen, in the creative process, which is really what this movie is about, you come to loggerheads and you have to just keep the process moving forward, even if that requires jumpin’ on a plane and flying to London and knockin’ on hell-in-a-gasbag’s door. It’s just what the creative process requires sometimes, and it’s a good thing. It’s fun. Otherwise, you know, it’d be too much work.

Kelly, what a great script you wrote. My question for you is… did you find any sort of irony in being the writer on a film about a writer, and did you find that you had to make some sacrifices along the way that you didn’t want to make? Did you ever feel kind of like P.L. Travers at any point? 

KELLY MARCEL: Um, actually, weirdly no. I’ve been asked this question a lot, and this particular process was kind of beautiful from day one, really. Unlike what Tom was just saying, nobody said “no.” Everybody said “yes” all the way through, including all of these amazing people sitting at this table, which sort of still blows my mind. It’s, “my God, Colin Farrell.” Um-

COLIN FARRELL: I know, I know. [laughs]

KELLY MARCEL: Hi.

COLIN FARRELL: It’s very nice meeting you.

KELLY MARCEL: So,no. It was a great process. And, I did think at, you know, at one point, Alison and I did think that Disney would probably give us a cease and desist order, and not make the movie. But, in fact, they embraced us with open arms. I don’t think John Lee and I ever felt the hand of the studio on our shoulder. They really trusted us to go ahead and make it the way that we wanted to make it. So, no, we didn’t make any compromises and I don’t feel like P.L. Travers.

COLIN FARRELL: But no lifetime pass for the theme park, either, which is-

KELLY MARCEL: No.

COLIN FARRELL: Kind’a’ stingy.

KELLY MARCEL: But I still get to sit next to Colin Farrell.

Was it difficult to combine these episodes of L.A., London, and these flashbacks which are like a film in a film? And how challenging was it for you?

JOHN LEE HANCOCK: Kelly’s script laid out kind of pretty much like it is in the movie. I thought it worked very well on the page, so you want to make sure that you give your best effort to accomplish it on the screen. I think the most difficult part for me was just wrapping my brain around the idea that it’s not just 1961 Los Angeles and 1906 Australia, but that these two time frames start to fold over each other at some point, and even to the point where Richard and Robert Sherman’s lyrics are ending up in her memories in her father’s mouth, which makes her not an incredibly reliable narrator of these, which is why they’re stylized to a point, like childhood memories are. So I think that was a difficult thing to think about. But all of us talked about it, and Kelly and I, in prep, spent a lot of time talking about the way one scene would influence the next, and how this would hopefully, brick after brick, add up to one plus one equaling three.

One of my readers is a really big fan of yours and wanted me to ask you if there is a possibility of yet another Nanny McPhee movie?

EMMA THOMPSON: The second one, we had a lovely time making it, and it went down very well in my country, and I came here, I’ve just told this story with Tom. We came here and we did what we’re all doing now, which is sort of big old two week tour of all the States, and it was just wonderful, because I had never been to many of the States, and everybody was very enthusiastic. And the film played beautifully, and I got to the end of the tour, and I was pretty tired. You know. And I was on my way home, and I was in New York just packing my bags, literally packing my bag to go home, when the phone rang. I said, “Oh, hello,” you know. “How’s it going?” This was opening weekend. “Well, uh…” I said, “What? What?” “Well, it’s, you know, the box office, it’s not as good as we wanted it to be.” I said, “Okay. What do you mean?” “We wanted, we projected-,” this is what happens these days, okay? Just so as you know. “We projected that it would take 14 million dollars. It only took 9.7.” I’m s-, I, I mean, I don’t understand what that means. I go, “Gosh, 9.7 million dollars for a-, I mean, that seems like quite a lot of money, really. Um, but, anyway, you seem to be suicidal.” So I better take that as evidence that there won’t be another one. And that’s how it works. So it doesn’t matter how good the movie is. It doesn’t matter how th-, what matters is what it takes during the opening weekend. So, you know, you guys should know that, ‘cause it’s slightly distressing sometimes.

TOM HANKS: I am hoping to make “Saving Nanny McPhee,” [laughs] which would really be, the way I count it, six birds with one stone, three and three, and I don’t know, that’s what I’m hopin’.

So much of this movie is about the pre-production process, but it basically skips the entire production and it goes straight to the premiere. I’m wondering if the production was ever on the table as something to be added into the film, or if it was something that you always knew you were going to skip?

KELLY MARCEL: No, there was, there was never a point that we talked about putting the production of the film into it, I don’t think, was there, Alison?

ALISON OWEN: No.

KELLY MARCEL: We-, yeah? No. It was, I mean, it just, you know, it’s gonna be a 20-hour movie if we try and that bit as well with a whole new cast. It wouldn’t have worked. I quite like that time jump.

 

Disney presents “Saving Mr. Banks,” directed by John Lee Hancock, produced by Alison Owen, Ian Collie and Philip Steuer, and written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Executive producers are Paul Trijbits, Christine Langan, Andrew Mason and Troy Lum.

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SAVING MR. BANKS opens in theaters limited on December 13th and opens wide on December 20th