‘Saving Mr. Banks’ World Premiere Photo Gallery

Gallery of photos of Walt Disney Pictures’ Saving Mr. Banks stars Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson at the BFI London Film Festival. Saving Mr. Banks was the closing night film at the 57th BFI London Film Festival held at the Odeon Leicester Square on October 20th, 2013 in London, England. (Photos Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures / Photos by David Dettman)

Saving Mr. Banks opens in limited theaters on December 13, 2013 and expands on December 20, 2013.

The Plot:

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.

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.