Jason from MNPP here with a tidbit of movie news that hit over the weekend - it is official: after a few months of rumors the legendary Dame Angela Lansbury has joined the cast of Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel that Rob Marshall is currently directing with Emily Blunt stuffing her little feet into the great big sturdy shoes of Julie Andrews. The film will tackle elements drawn from the other seven books that Poppins author P.L. Travers (and tell me you don't immediately picture Emma Thompson when I say that name) wrote about the characters.
Lansbury is set to play "The Balloon Lady," and having never read the books I had to do some real digging to find out who the heck that supposedly "beloved" character was -- not even Wikipedia was any help. Thankfully Homorazzi knew what was up:
"Her character was introduced in Mary Poppins Comes Back, the second book of P.L. Travers’ series. She wreaks helium havoc in the park during one of Poppins’ outing with the Banks children."
Have any of you read the books? Is the character as beloved as they say? It's hard to think she won't be once Lansbury gets her hands on her. What a joy it will be to have this grand Dame back on the big screen. We've still got quite the wait on this movie though - it's not set for a release unti Christmas Day 2018.