Tom Hanks as Walt Disney

Disney began production today on Saving Mr. Banks, the account of Walt Disney’s 20-year pursuit of the film rights to P.L. Travers’ popular novel, Mary Poppins, and the testy partnership the upbeat filmmaker develops with the uptight author during the project’s pre-production in 1961. Saving Mr. Banks will film entirely in the Los Angeles area, with key locations to include Disneyland in Anaheim and the Disney Studios in Burbank.  Filming will conclude around Thanksgiving 2012, with no specific 2013 release date yet set. Two-time Academy Award®-winner Tom Hanks will essay the role of the legendary Disney (the first time the entrepreneur has ever been depicted in a dramatic film) alongside fellow double Oscar®-winner Emma Thompson in the role of the prickly novelist.

Saving Mr. Banks will be directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) based on a screenplay by Kelly Marcel (Terra Nova), from a story by Sue Smith and Kelly Marcel. The cast also includes Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson, Rachel Griffiths, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Paul Giamatti, Kathy Baker and 11-year-old newcomer Annie Buckley.

Before actually signing away the book’s rights, Travers’ demands for script and character control circumvent Disney’s vision for the film adaptation as well as those of the creative team of screenwriter Don DaGradi and sibling composers Richard and Robert Sherman. When Travers travels from London to Hollywood in 1961 to finally discuss bringing her beloved character to the motion picture screen, Disney meets a prim, uncompromising sexagenarian who is not only suspect of the impresario’s concept for the film but struggling with her own past. During her stay in California, Travers’ reflects back on her childhood in 1906 Australia, a trying time for her family which molded her aspirations to write and inspired the characters in her 1934 book.