I expect we’re going to start seeing a lot more when it comes to the upcoming award season contenders over the next month or so as the summer movie season winds down and the fall festival circuit heats up. Today we get one such new glimpse as Time has revealed the above first look at Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson in Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) and telling the story of author P.L. Travers (Thompson) as she travels from London to Hollywood as Walt Disney (Hanks) adapts her novel “Mary Poppins” for the big screen.
I’ve heard Hanks’ role in the film is rather small to the point it will be pushed as a Supporting Actor contender at the Oscars while Thompson remains a strong contender for a sixth Oscar nomination (fifth as an actor) and possibly a third Oscar win.
Thompson is quoted by Time discussing Travers as a character and says, “She was a woman of quite eye-watering complexity and contradiction. 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 honor. 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.”
The film is currently slated for a December 13 release, which leads me to believe Disney may avoid bringing it to any of the fall festivals and simply wait for the hub-bub to die down.
