MUMBAI: Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson have been signed to play pivotal roles in a film based on Disney‘s Mary Poppins titled Saving Mr Banks.

The film, scripted by Kelly Marcel, details how Walt Disney spent 14 years coaxing PL Travers, the Australian author of Mary Poppins, to adapt her books about the magical nanny.
Travers resisted for a long time because she feared Disney would make an animated adaptation. The studio finally made a live-action movie in 1964 that starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. But the film was not without the animated sequences that turned Travers off from working with Disney again.

The studio picked up the Black List script earlier this year and later signed John Lee Hancock to direct.

Hanks is currently shooting for Sony‘s true-life tale Captain Phillips about a captain who dealt with Somali pirates during the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. Thompson, who will be seen in Men in Black III has done a voice over in Pixar‘s Brave.