Ben Whishaw For Grown-Up Michael Banks Role In Mary Poppins Sequel?

The Mary Poppins sequel may just have found its grown-up Michael Banks.

Brit actor and Bond movie star Ben Whishaw is reportedly in talks for the role in ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, which will be set 25 years after the first movie, released in 1964.

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Movie musical maven Rob Marshall, of ‘Chicago’ fame, is at the helm, with a star-studded cast slowly assembling.

Emily Blunt is set to play the magical nanny, filling Julie Andrews’ formidable shoes, with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man behind the smash-hit Broadway show ‘Hamilton’, also on board.

Miranda is said to be playing a street lamplighter called Jack, in a role which appears to echo that of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep Burt from the original movie.

Meanwhile, Meryl Streep, who starred in Marshall’s ‘Into The Woods’, is also in talks to join the project, reportedly playing the role of Mary Poppins’ cousin Topsy.

The story, which has been penned by David Magee, responsible for the screenplays for movies like ‘Finding Neverland’ and ‘Life of Pi’, is set in Depression-era London.

It finds the now-grown Jane and Michael Banks visited once again by Mary Poppins following a ‘personal loss’.

In the 1964 original, Jane and Michael were played by child actors Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber.

Tragically, Garber, who was seven when he was cast as Michael Banks in director Robert Stevenson’s classic movie, died at just 21, having contracted hepatitis in India, which caused pancreatitis.

The new movie is due out at Christmas, 2018.

Image credits: AP/Rex Features