You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Daniel Howitt's interview with the director of Mary Poppins Returns, Rob Marshall.

Hey, everyone, this is Daniel Howitt, and I am here with a very special guest.

You know, director Rob Marshall from such films as Chicago, Into the Woods,

and of course, from this year's Mary Poppins Returns.

Rob, thanks so much for joining me today.

Absolutely, nice to speak to you.

First and foremost, congratulations on the success of the film.

It is so much fun, such a fantastic film.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Well, it was a passion project for sure.

I will say it took three years to make and it really came directly from the heart.

That is for sure.

You can tell. And obviously this is a sequel to a massively beloved film.

So what were your hesitations in coming on board?

What was the pressure like of following up the original Mary Poppins?

Well, the first film means so incredibly much to me because it was the first film I ever saw as a child,

which I think many people had that

exact same experience, you know. So it, so when they came to me, it was daunting immediately because

I thought, well, how do you do that? How do you create a sequel to that incredible film? But then

what I realized as things progressed is that there were eight books that she wrote, so there

was a lot of material to call from and to work from, even though the material is very episodic

and we had to create a completely new narrative, myself and David McGee and John DeLuca, it was exciting

to see how much material that P.L. Travers had written and how many more stories there were.

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