Meryl Streep is negotiating to appear in Disney’s upcoming Mary Poppins sequel Mary Poppins Returns, Variety reports. She’ll join the already-attached Emily Blunt, who will play magical nanny Poppins, and Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will play a lamplighter named Jack. (Jack is not to be confused with the chimney sweep/one-man-band player named Bert played by Dick Van Dyke in the original film.) Rob Marshall is directing from a screenplay by David Magee, with a score by Marc Shaiman and songs by Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
The new film will be set during the Great Depression, as the original P.L. Travers novels were; the 1964 Disney film moved the story back to 1910. Although it will draw from all of the Mary Poppins books, Mary Poppins Returns is an original story, not an adaptation. Technically it will be a sequel, of sorts, to the film: The Banks children from the first film will now be adults, and Michael Banks will have children of his own.
Streep will play a character named Topsy, who is described as Mary Poppins’ cousin, though it seems likely she’s a cousin by marriage. In Mary Poppins Comes Back, Poppins has a cousin named Mr. Turvy, who marries one Topsy Tartlett, making her, of course, Topsy Turvy. The Travers books, as Charlotte Runcie wrote in the Guardian, are much weirder than Disney’s film, so it will be interesting to see how Magee has adapted them. The cast may not be complete yet, but Mary Poppins Returns already has a firm release date of Dec. 25, 2018. Chim Chim Cher-ee!
