New 'Mary Poppins Returns' sneak peek: A dancing Dick Van Dyke, a new song, and some familiar-looking penguins
If you grew up singing along to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” and “Spoonful of Sugar,” this nostalgic teaser for Mary Poppins Returns should look familiar. Disney has released a “special look” at the upcoming musical, starring Emily Blunt in the role originated by Julie Andrews in 1964’s Mary Poppins.
Though the sequel takes place a generation later, focusing on the children of Mary’s original charge Michael Banks, the teaser reveals its many nods to the original.
In addition to Mary’s winking parrot cane, there’s a journey into a land of animated creatures (note the dancing penguins borrowed from the original “Jolly Holiday” sequence), a lamplighter dance that recalls the high-energy chimney-sweep number “Step in Time,” a house where children float to the ceiling, and most affecting of all, 92-year-old Dick Van Dyke re-creating the dancing-old-man shtick from his youth.
Besides these familiar delights, the teaser includes the partial debut of a new song, “Can You Imagine That?”, written in the vein of the Sherman brothers’ classic Mary Poppins score by Hairspray songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
The Rob Marshall-directed film co-stars Lin-Manuel Miranda as lamplighter Jack (who seems to fill the same role as Van Dyke’s Bert in the original), Ben Whishaw as grown-up Michael Banks, Emily Mortimer as his sister, Jane Banks, and Julie Walters as the Bankses’ housekeeper Ellen, along with a colorful cast of A-list bit players that includes Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, and Angela Lansbury.
Mary Poppins Returns opens in theaters on Dec. 19.
Watch the first trailer:
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
