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First look at Tom Hanks as Walt Disney in Saving Mr Banks

Actor looks slick as the legendary filmmaker in this official snap.

Tache... first look at Tom Hanks as Walt Disney (Copyright: Disney)

It's not quite a Christian Bale-style transformation, but nevertheless, the first official look at Tom Hanks as animation legend Walt Disney has emerged.

Sporting a rather smart 'tache and slicked back hair, Hanks grins broadly as co-star Emma Thompson looks deeply grumpy in a scene from the forthcoming 'Saving Mr Banks'.



Revealed in Time magazine - following some leaked Twitter pictures earlier this year - it also features an interview with Thompson, who explains her role in the film.

She plays writer P.L. Travers, and the plot revolves around Disney's struggle to persuade her to let him adapt her book 'Mary Poppins' for the screen.

Judging from this pic, the negotiations aren't going very well, though as we all know, he gets his way in the end and the iconic Disney picture emerged in 1964, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

The story will shift between her negotiations with Disney and her difficult childhood in Australia. Her father Travers Robert Goff becomes the inspiration for George Banks, the patriarch in the film.


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Talking to Time, Thompson said P.L. Travers “was a woman of quite eye-watering complexity and contradiction,” Thompson said. “Often I play people who are controlled by some very clear guiding moral principles. Like Margaret Schlegel [in 'Howards End'], guided by the early principles of feminism and equal rights, and Elinor Dashwood [in 'Sense and Sensibility'], guided by the principles of decency and honour.

“There are very clear moral prisms these women pour life through, and I understand that very well. And [Travers] was not like that at all. She was far more chaotic and confused and morally various.”

[First grainy pic of Tom Hanks as Walt Disney]


Also starring are Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman and Colin Farrell as Goff, with 'The Blind Side's John Lee Hancock directing.

Travers famously hated the film version of her book, particularly the music and the animation, and as a result ruled out any further screen adaptations of her other Mary Poppins novels.


'Saving Mr Banks' due out on January 17.