casting couch

Ben Whishaw in Talks to Join Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda in Mary Poppins Returns

82nd Annual Drama League Awards Ceremony And Luncheon
Photo: Walter McBride/WireImage

Disney’s Mary Poppins sequel just got even more genteel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, British actor Ben Whishaw, who plays the most recent incarnation of Q in the new Bond films, is in talks to star in Mary Poppins Returns alongside Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Returns will pick up 20 years after the events of the original film, which came out in 1964 but was set in 1910, and Whishaw will play Michael Banks, one of the two children whom Poppins cared for as the magical nanny to the Banks family. Michael and his sister, Jane, come back together after he experiences a “personal loss,†at which point Poppins returns, in the form of Emily Blunt, to help the family. Miranda will play a kindly lamplighter and friend of Poppins named Jack. Frequent director of screen musicals Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Nine, Chicago) will helm the picture, but the real spoonful of sugar in THR’s report is that Meryl Streep is also in talks to join the cast. And your family Christmas plans for 2018 are already set, as Mary Poppins Returns will premiere on December 25.

Ben Whishaw in Talks for Mary Poppins Sequel