'Mary Poppins Returns' Images: Emily Blunt And Lin-Manuel Miranda Try To Recapture The Magic Of The Original

It's been 54 years since Julie Andrews became an instant cinematic icon in Disney's Mary Poppins, winning an Oscar for her role as the magical nanny who's practically perfect in every way. Now Andrews is passing the baton (or more appropriately, the talking umbrella) to Emily Blunt, who takes over the role in next month's Mary Poppins Returns.

Entertainment Weekly has published several new photos from the highly-anticipated sequel, and you can see a few of them below.

In this first image, Poppins leads her lamplighter pal Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Banks children Georgie (Joel Dawson), Annabel (Pixie Davies), and John (Nathanael Saleh) into a magical world where live-action and animation can interact. In the original film, the characters jump into a chalk drawing on the sidewalk, but in this sequel, EW says they travel into a Royal Doulton bowl (which is...a brand of bowl, I guess?).

Here, Blunt and Miranda lead a "mega-sized musical number set on the stage of an animated music hall." Is this inside the bowl as well? Who knows! But it does feature the return of those adorable 2D animated penguin waiters from the first movie. (Fun fact: the penguins were named after Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin).

And finally, here's another look at Meryl Streep as Flopsy, Mary Poppins' whimsical cousin who's meant to be something of a throwback to Uncle Albert from the first movie. (If you haven't seen the original in a while, Albert was the guy who laughed so hard he floated on the ceiling.)

There are several other images over at EW, and you can head over there to see them all. For more Mary Poppins Returns info, be sure to read our set report from /Film's Jacob Hall right here.

Here's the official synopsis:

Set in 1930s London, which is the time period of the original novels by P.L. Travers. The story follows Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane Banks (Emily Mortimer), who are now grown up. Michael is living with his three children (Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, and Joel Dawson) and housekeeper Ellen (Julie Walters), in the house on Cherry Tree Lane. After Michael has a personal loss, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) comes back into the lives of the Banks family. She is joined by a street lamplighter named Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), and an eccentric cousin named Topsy (Meryl Streep).

Mary Poppins Returns arrives in theaters on December 19, 2018.