EXCLUSIVE: They were told not to say anything, and actually had to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that hasn’t stopped a number of the nation’s exhibitors from giving their opinions on Disney’s big Christmas release — and perhaps Oscar hopeful — Mary Poppins Returns. The film had its first official reveal…

Angela Lansbury, who has starred in a number of Disney films over her long career, has just joined the cast of Rob Marshall’s sequel Mary Poppins Returns, which is filming at Shepperton Studios. She will portray the Balloon Lady. The film is scheduled for release Christmas Day 2018. Directed and produced by Marshall…

Emily Blunt practices what she preaches. As cinema is under increasing pressure to acknowledge and deliver work that appeals to more than white teenage males, so Blunt is using the profile she's developed through roles like The Devil Wears Prada, The Young Victoria and Sicario to bring to the screen fully-rounded…

Disney’s live-action sequel to its 1964 classic Mary Poppins will hit theaters on December 25, 2018, as Mary Poppins Returns. The company just announced the title and date for its film starring Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The studio earlier had staked that Christmas date for an “Untitled Disney Live Action #2.&#8221…

Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda is in talks to join the Walt Disney Studios’ planned sequel to Mary Poppins. Emily Blunt is in talks for the lead role, played by Julie Andrews in the 1964 film. Disney had no comment, but a source with knowledge of the project says the untitled film will connect with…

EXCLUSIVE: Keith Stanfield has added to his busy schedule by joining the cast of Jordan Peele’s upcoming Blumhouse horror pic Get Out. Peele wrote and is directing the film, billed as a fresh take on the horror-thriller genre that focuses on a young African American man who visits his Caucasian girlfriend's family…

What’s old is new yet again at the Walt Disney Company. The film unit has been busy with reboots of classic characters, and now comes word of a 21st century Mary Poppins. The company is adding a spoonful of sugar to a new live-action musical from Into The Woods director Rob Marshall, set two decades after the classic…

The Library of Congress has unveiled its annual list of 25 films that will join the National Film Registry. The movies are culled from the period 1919-2002 and include classics like Rita Hayworth-starrer Gilda; sci-fi pic Forbidden Planet; western The Magnificent Seven; war drama Judgment At Nuremberg; Mary Poppins…

After earlier premieres at the London Film Festival in October and the AFI Film Fest at the Chinese Theatre in November where the original Mary Poppins premiered in 1964, Saving Mr. Banks, Walt Disney Studio’s big awards contender, finally had its official Los Angeles premiere on a cool December Monday night. It took…

Screenwriter Kelly Marcel came late into the process of writing her famously blacklisted script for Saving Mr. Banks (12/13). Original writer Sue Smith had crafted it more as a biopic of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers but Marcel focused instead on the three-week period in 1961 that Travers came to Disney studios and…

Any doubt that awards season has not kicked into full gear even though it’s only early November were firmly erased Friday night as I kept running into the same Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Academy members as we dashed from an AFI Fest pre-party for The Weinstein Co.‘s August Osage County premiere in…

UPDATE, 12:45 PM: Disney president and CEO Bob Iger has released this statement on Robert Sherman’s passing: "Today, on behalf of everyone at Disney, we mourn the loss of an extraordinary talent, Robert Sherman. One of the world's greatest songwriters and a true Disney legend, his legacy will endure forever through…