International poster for Disney's Saving Mr. Banks

Saving Mr. Banks will tell the story of the making of Disney classic, Mary Poppins , with Tom Hanks starring as the head of the House Of Mouse, Walt Disney, and Emma Thomson playing Poppins novelist, P.L. Travers.

Hanks has been scoring raves for his likeness to ol' Walt (his little 'tache scoring its own special plaudits), and the poster is likely to be similarly celebrated for its weaving in of classic Disney icons.

Check out the poster below:

[ Click to see in hi-res ]

Here's the official synopsis on the film:

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.

The film is set to open in the UK in winter 2013.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.