Lin-Manuel Miranda And Emily Blunt Confirmed For ‘Mary Poppins’ Sequel

Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda can add Disney musical to his already growing lists of achievements. The award-winning Miranda has been confirmed by Disney to star opposite Emily Blunt in the new Mary Poppins sequel after previous reports stated Miranda was in talks to co-star in the future film.

The Mary Poppins sequel is just one of many Disney live action movies greenlighted, according to The Wrap. Maleficient 2 with Angelina Jolie and the Jon Favreau-directed The Jungle Book 2 are the other Disney sequels expected to film in the next few years.

Rob Marshall, who last directed the Disney 2014 musical Into the Woods, will be the director for the second Mary Poppins film. Emily Blunt will star as the title character and Lin-Manuel Miranda will play a lamplighter called Jack, who was not in the original film but will be similar to chimney sweeper Bert, Dick Van Dyke’s character in the first movie.

The new movie will be based on the Mary Poppins book series written by P.L. Travers that spanned from 1934-1988, and the sequel will not take any material from the original film except that the Banks children that Mary Poppins cares for will be featured in the sequel.

The newest film role for Miranda is the latest coup for the composer-actor. The New York City-born Miranda, who created the highly acclaimed musical Hamilton and stars as its lead, was last year’s recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Award. Miranda’s Hamilton also won Best Musical Theater Album at this year’s Grammys and earlier this month, the musical received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The Mary Poppins sequel will be the third Disney project for Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is the songwriter and composer for the upcoming Moana, a computer-animated fantasy adventure musical that will be released on November 23. Miranda was also the special featured composer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and he performed two songs in the movie as the character Shag Kava.

Miranda will not be composing any new music for the Mary Poppins sequel; Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are on board to write new songs for the film. The sequel’s story is set 20 years after the events of the first film. The Mary Poppins book series is comprised of seven novels, and the new movie will be loosely based on those stories.

The Mary Poppins sequel is Emily Blunt’s second musical with Disney. The actress starred in Into the Woods as The Baker’s Wife, which earned Blunt a Golden Globes Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination last year.

Blunt currently stars in The Huntsman: Winter’s War, which had its opening last weekend and received negative reviews from critics. Blunt has another movie, The Girl on the Train, opening on October 7.

While Lin-Manuel Miranda had a small role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Mary Poppins sequel will be his first major screen role. Miranda has enjoyed success on Broadway over the past few years, with his latest Hamilton, and the first musical that he wrote the music for, In the Heights, that debuted on Broadway in 2008.

Miranda is currently performing as Alexander Hamilton in the Broadway musical Hamilton, which is still a hot ticket among New York City’s theater shows. The groundbreaking musical is set to make over $105 million in its first year on Broadway. The only other musical to hit the $100 million mark is Disney’s The Lion King, which achieved that goal in 2014.

Recently, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the rest of the Hamilton cast paid tribute to Prince, who passed away last Thursday. At curtain call just hours after Prince’s death was announced, the cast danced to an instrumental version of “Let’s Go Crazy.”

Are we gonna let the elevator break us down?
(Oh no let's go) pic.twitter.com/8KL5DeW0FB

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) April 22, 2016

[Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images]