To read more about Mary Poppins Returns, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. It’s no secret that all nannies are compared to one single, supernaturally-inclined doyenne of discipline who flew in on the eastern wind in 1964. The iconic character has stayed in the hearts of moviegoers in the decades since she first burst onto the screen — and now, she’s back. Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns (in theaters Christmas 2018) might be one of the highest-profile sequels ever attempted, more than half a century after Walt Disney’s cinematic classic immortalized the careers of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, smashed records, got a word in the dictionary (guess which one) and become one of the most cherished films of all time. This time, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) leads Michael’s wayward children (and Jane and Michael themselves) on a series of unbelievable adventures — to the top of Big Ben, the bottom of the ocean, into magical encounters with animated dancing penguins and upside-down cousins (hey, Meryl Streep!). If anyone can help this family find the light they’ve lost, it’s Mary Poppins. The complete article can be read over at Entertainment Weekly and a first on-set picture can be found in the photo gallery.

Today, Variety brings us some surprising, very unexpected news. Universal is officially moving along on a sequel to the 2008 hit “Mamma Mia,” with “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” scribe Ol Parker writing and directing the new movie. The studio also dated the film, titled “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!,” for July 20, 2018. Playtone Pictures, which produced the first pic, is back on for the sequel. Universal has been bouncing around ideas for years on how to proceed with the box office smash. Sources say that one angle could focus on Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnan characters years before the original takes place. The first film is based on the iconic musical about a bride-to-be trying to find her real father told using hit songs by the popular ’70s group Abba. The sequel will feature Abba songs not featured in the 2008 movie, “along with some reprised favorites,” according to the studio’s announcement. Littlestar’s Judy Craymer and Playtone’s Gary Goetzman, who produced the original, will reteam for the sequel. Craymer is also the creator and producer of the stage musical. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus are aboard again to provide music and lyrics and serve as executive producers. Parker is best known for writing both “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies.

Meryl Streep, has called for the freeing of Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker sentenced to 20 years in jail after being subjected to a sham trial in Russia. Streep was pictured alongside Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem with a “Free Sentsov” sign in a photograph taken during the PEN America Annual Literary Gala on April 25, at which Sentsov was honoured with a 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award. Nayyem, who posted the photograph on his Facebook account on April 30, said that the actress was genuinely interested in Sentsov’s case, and eager to help. “She was already aware of the fact that one of the nominees is an imprisoned filmmaker, but didn’t know (Sentsov’s) entire story,” Nayyem wrote, “I told her about the case, (Sentsov’s) family, Crimea, (Russian) nationality being forced upon him, and his two children stuck in the annexed territory.” Nayyem said that Streep asked him how she could help, which is when the lawmaker told her about the Pen America campaign for freeing Sentsov and suggested they take a photograph with a “Free Sentsov” sign to raise awareness. “She agreed without hesitating,” Nayyem says, adding that she also asked Nayyem to be in the photograph too. “Who will believe that I came up with this sign myself?” Nayyem quoted Streep as saying.The complete article can be read over at Kyiv Post, with many thanks to Glenn for the heads-up.

Sad news today. Jonathan Demme, best known for directed “The Silence of the Lambs”, for which he won a Best Director Academy Award, has died at 73. Meryl Streep has spoken out on the passing of filmmaker Jonathan Demme, who directed the Oscar winner in 2015’s rocker comedy, “Ricki and the Flash.” In a statement provided to TheWrap, Streep praised Demme as: “A big hearted, big tent, compassionate man- in full embrace in his life of people in need- and of the potential of art, music, poetry and film to fill that need- a big loss to the caring world.” Demme died Wednesday in New York of esophageal cancer and complications from heart disease. He was originally treated for the disease in 2010, but suffered from a recurrence in 2015. His condition deteriorated in recent weeks leading to his passing. In “Ricki and the Flash,” Streep played an aging rocker coming to terms and dealing with the reconciliation of her music life and her family life. “Juno” Oscar winner Diablo Cody wrote the screenplay. Streep sung and played guitar live for the role. Her and Demme were friends prior to making “Ricki the Flash.” Demme’s other credits include “Philadelphia,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “Melvin and Howard,” “Swing Shift” and “Something Wild.”

As previously announced, Meryl Streep was among the guests of the Academy of American Poets’ 15th Annual Poetry and the Creative Mind on Thursday, and the Literary Hub has a nice article on the evening and the poems that were read. The sweeping Alice Tully Hall was full, the lobby had been swarmed for almost an hour before, and tickets had sold out in about three minutes. The state of our world is precarious, and it’s hard not to feel uncertain or desperate; the poems chosen for the night seemed to speak precisely to that. As the final speaker of the evening, Meryl Streep said that she was thinking about what Uzo Aduba said about the first poem she ever loved; hers was the lullaby her mother used to sing to her. “It’s not on the program, but I think I have to sing it.” And she did. After the song, she read Gary Snyder’s “Mother Earth: Her Whales,” and then, to cheer us up, “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. “Life is short and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,” a mother begins, before saying she will keep it from her children: I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. Would it be too sentimental to say that a large room of poets, singing their childhood memories and pleas for resistance, reading poems that enriched and inspired and devastated them, felt like it had filled in the bones of Lincoln Center and New York and the world for just one evening? When Meryl Streep reads poetry to you, it’s hard to resist romance. Pictures from the evening have been added to the photo gallery.

On this day 40 years ago, Meryl Streep was first seen by a broad television audience in the CBS movie of the week “The Deadliest Season”. In it, Michael Moriarty plays a hockey player who struggles with getting older and uses more and more violent tricks on the field to remain in form, until one of his actions land him in court. Meryl Streep plays his wife, which says pretty much everything about her character – there’s not much to do or anything poignant to say (if you don’t count “When I watched you in a game it turned me on”). This short period of being an unknown film actress lasted for only a year until her breakthrough performances in “The Deer Hunter” and “Holocaust” in 1978, so it’s kind of fun to see Meryl Streep in a bit part, and how she manages to give this character depth and meaning after all. For more information about the film, visit the career page with additional production notes and pictures. To celebrate its anniversary, six exclusive clips have been added to the video archive, with many thanks to Simona for helping me out. Enjoy!

According to Deadline, “The Post will be hitting theaters much sooner than we have thought. Steven Spielberg only said yes this past Monday to direct Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in the Fox/Amblin co-production and they’ve all been clearing their schedules to start production in late May. Deals are still being finalized, but that means the film will be ready for release to qualify for this coming Oscar season. As AwardsWatch continues in a second artice, Spielberg was prepping The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara for a 2017 release (and was heavily predicted by the Gold Rush Gang in those first predictions) and is in post- production on Ready Player One (set for March 2018). That opens up the schedules of Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac, both set to star in Mortara (but also opens up their Oscar chances in other 2017 films). Hanks was ready to start the WWII thriller Greyhound but now that’s pushed back. This marks Hanks’s fifth collaboration with Spielberg. Streep is currently filming Mary Poppins Returns in London but will be long finished by the time The Post begins. Many thanks once again to Frank for the heads-up.

The 89th Annual Academy Awards will go down in history for its shocking false announcement in the Best Picture category, which made one forget about the pointless Lagerfeld tabloid story (although Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t resist to ask, “nice dress. Is that an Ivanka?). Kimmel pulled no punches during his opening monologue, joking that the 20-time-nominee was getting a bit too much credit for her acting chops. “We’re here to honor the actors who seem great, but actually really aren’t. And of all the ‘great’ actors here in Hollywood, one in particular has stood the test of time for her many uninspiring and overrated performances,” Kimmel dead-panned. “From her mediocre early work in ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Out of Africa,’ to her underwhelming performances in ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ Meryl Streep has phoned it for more than 50 films over the course of her lackluster career.” Kimmel finished things off by asking everyone else in the auditorium to show their appreciation for the actress. “This is Meryl’s 20th Oscar nomination,” he pointed out. “Made even more amazing considering the fact that she wasn’t even in a movie this year, we just wrote her name down out of habit. Everybody, please join me in giving Meryl Streep a totally undeserved round of applause.” The evening went as expected – until its very unexpected end – with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Meryl’s friend Viola Davis and Javier Bardem paying tribute to Meryl’s performance in “The Bridges of Madison County”, before joining her on stage to present the Best Cinematography category to Linus Sandgren for “La La Land”. Pictures from the (apparently very brief) arrivals and the show have been added to the photo gallery. Many thanks to Lindsey for her contributions. Enjoy, and goodbye to the 2017 awards season!

Tonight, Meryl Streep has attended the 30th Annual British Academy Awards as a Best Actress nominee for “Florence Foster Jenkins”. The trophy was handed to Emma Stone, but “Florence” won in the Hair & Makeup category . Over 100 pictures from the arrivals and the show have been added to the photo gallery. Many many thanks to the wonderful Claudia and Lindsey for their contributions. Much appreciated. Edit: A clip of Emma Stone’s acceptance speech has been added as well, since no better segment from the Best Actress category has showed up – but besides the nominees and a short clip from “Florence Foster Jenkins” we’re not missing much.

Meryl Streep drew cheers at yesterday’s annual gala for the Human Rights Campaign, a national group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ rights, where Streep received the group’s National Ally For Equality Award. Among the other honorees and speakers were Senator minority leader Charles Schumer, who was more impassioned and freewheeling than we are used to seeing him on the Senate floor; Moonlight writer Tarell Alvin McCraney; and late-night host Seth Meyers. But it was Streep who carried the night. As Deadline wrote, Meryl spoke of the early and powerful influence of teachers when she was growing up in suburban New Jersey, and particularly of Paul Grossman, her music teacher when she was in sixth and seventh grades. He had taken the class on a field trip to the Statue of Liberty, she recalled. “Our whole class stood at the feet of that huge, beautiful woman and we sang a song that he had taught us with the lyrics taken from the poem by Emma Lazarus engraved at the face of the monument.” Streep paused as if considering her next move, and then began to sing. “Give me your tired your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore Send thee the homeless tempest toss’t to me. I life my lamp beside the golden door.” At one point she turned away from the audience, her eyes red with tears before continuing, and when finished, she half-whispered, “I can’t remember what I did Tuesday, but I remember that.” Streep said that Paul Grossman later became Paula Grossman and was promptly fired, never seeing a classroom again.