Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks landed on the role of Walt Disney in a Walt Disney Studios film about children's classic Mary Poppins called Saving Mr. Banks. According to Deadline, he is set to star opposite Emma Thompson as Australian author P.L. Travers, who held out for more than 14 years before finally agreeing to allow Hollywood to adapt her book. John Lee Hancock, who helmed "The Blind Side," is set to direct.

Saving Mr. Banks, which has landed fittingly at studio Disney last February, is the latest example of the film industry delving into its own past in order to produce new entertainment. Despite Little else is known about the project, it could be a great screening as last year's Oscar-nominated My Week With Marilyn centred on the troubled 1957 production of Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier comedy The Prince and the Showgirl, while Anthony Hopkins and Scarlett Johansson are to star in the upcoming Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho about the director's struggle to bypass the studios and fund the iconic low-budget, black-and-white 1960 horror film from his own pocket.

Mary Poppins, published in 1934, was inspired by hardships in the writer's own life, as well as her relationship with her father. Travers was not impressed by the final 1964 film, being particularly disappointed with the animated sequences, and subsequently refused to sell any of her other stories to Disney. There are eight novels in total about the magical English nanny who turns up at the Banks household in London to care for the children after being blown in on the east wind.

Disney's musical starred Julie Andrews and the role brought her an Oscar and four other for the musical itself.