Mary Poppins, the famous creation of P. L. Travers, could be popping open her umbrella and flying through the skies in a new TV series that is in the works.
According to Deadline, a live-action adaptation of Travers' novels is in development, and likely to be closer to the original eight novels than the classic 1964 musical comedy fantasy starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, or the 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, which starred Emily Blunt as the magical child carer.
The new series is being developed by Tom Winchester for Pure Fiction Television, and it is understood that it will be darker, more dangerous and mysterious than previous versions, featuring the more 'complex' elements from the novels.
Some characters feature in the books but not the movies who could make an appearance in the series, including Neleus, a statue brought to life by Mary Poppins; her friend Orion, who comes down from the sky to see her; and Miss Naomi Andrew, the Banks children's former strict nanny who is present in the stage musical but not in the screen versions of the story.
The original screen version of Mary Poppins was a mixture of live action and animation, and featured Julie Andrews in her feature film debut. It became the highest-grossing film of 1964 in the US and a huge success for Disney around the world.
Starring Andrews alongside Dick Van Dyke as cockney Bert, David Tomlinson as George Banks, Glynis Johns as Winifred Banks and Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice as their children Michael and Jane, the movie was known for its catchy songs written and composed by the Sherman Brothers, including, of course, A Spoonful of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Julie Andrews won an Academy Award for her performance as Mary Poppins, and the movie was nominated a total of 13 Oscars, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. It won for Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Song (for Chim Chim Cher-ee) and Best Score.
The story of how the movie came to be was told in the 2013 drama Saving Mr Banks, with Emma Thompson as author Travers and Tom Hanks as producer Walt Disney, and a 2018 sequel to Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Returns, was also made and is loosely based on Travers' novels.
Travers, who wrote the Mary Poppins stories between 1926 and 1988, grew up in Queensland, Australia and immigrated to England at the age of 24.
In an interview with The Paris Review in 1982, she said of her famous creation: “When I sat down to write Mary Poppins or any of the other books, I did not know children would read it.”
She died in 1996 at the age of 96.
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