Mary Poppins Returns had its world premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on 29 November 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on 19 December 2018, making it the longest interval between film sequels in cinematic history, at 54 years.

[7] The film grossed $349 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, who praised the performances of the cast (particularly those of Blunt and Miranda), direction, visuals, musical score, musical numbers, costume design, production values, visual effects (especially the animated segments), and sense of nostalgia, although some critics found it too derivative of its predecessor.

Michael Banks lives in his childhood home with his three children, John, Annabel and Georgie, after the death of his wife, Kate, a year earlier.

Michael visits the bank seeking proof of his shares, but Wilkins denies that there are any records before covertly destroying the page from the official ledger.

Jack, a lamplighter and Bert's former apprentice, greets Mary Poppins and joins her and the children on a trip into the scene decorating the bowl.

During their visit to the Royal Doulton Music Hall ("A Cover is Not the Book"), Georgie is kidnapped by a talking wolf, weasel, and badger that are repossessing their belongings, and Annabel and John set out to rescue him.

The children visit Mary Poppins's cousin Topsy, hoping to get the bowl mended ("Turning Turtle") and learn that it has little monetary value.

In the late 1980s, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the vice-president of live-action production, Martin Kaplan, approached Travers with the idea of a sequel set years after the first film, with the Banks children now as adults and Julie Andrews reprising her role as an older Mary Poppins.

According to Sibley, Travers wrote notes on his script ideas and though she rejected some of them, she liked some of them, including replacing Bert with his brother, an ice cream man in a park in Edwardian London who similarly served as Mary's friend and potential admirer.

Four months later, however, casting issues emerged, as Andrews temporarily retired from making films and was not interested in reprising her role as Mary Poppins.

[19] The 2004 release of the 40th Anniversary DVD of the original film contained a trivia track that stated, in regards to a possible sequel, "One day the wind may change again ...".

[20] On 14 September 2015, Walt Disney Pictures president Sean Bailey pitched a new Mary Poppins film to Rob Marshall, John DeLuca, and Marc Platt, as the team had produced Into the Woods for the studio the year prior.

With approval from Travers' estate, Disney greenlit the project with the film taking place 25 years after the first[21] featuring a standalone narrative, based on the remaining seven books in the series.

[31] Scenes requiring green and blue screens for visual effects were first filmed on J and K Stages with physical set pieces for the cast to interact with, which were then swapped out in post-production with animation.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Mary Poppins Returns relies on the magic of its classic forebear to cast a familiar – but still solidly effective – family-friendly spell.

[47] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, writing "Emily Blunt is the magical nanny in this scarily accomplished clone-pastiche sequel, which starts terrifically and ends cloyingly – just like the original.

In an era of superhero franchises where sequels to successful movies turn up almost instantly, Mary Poppins's return shows that sometimes it pays to wait.

[57] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Its old-fashioned, honest sentimentality plasters a smile across your face and plants a tear in your eye, often simultaneously."

Rooney lauded Blunt's work (which he labelled as "preening vanity with unmistakable warmth") along with the supporting cast as well as the costumes, sets, musical score, and songs.

[58] Brian Truitt of USA Today described the film as a "comforting nostalgia-fest" and "satisfaction in spit-spot fashion" as well as commended the performances of Blunt and Miranda, Marshall's knack for musical numbers and Shaiman's "swinging delight" original score.

[59] The Atlantic's Christopher Orr remarked that: "Mary Poppins Returns serves as a reminder that, for all its global scope and hegemonic ambition, Disney still has a little magic left up its sleeve."

Orr praised Blunt's version of Mary Poppins to be "excellent", finding it "a little chillier and more austere" while referring to it as "truer to the spirit of the heroine of P. L. Travers's books".

She also highlighted Blunt's interpretation of the title character (in which she described the performance as close to "Travers's original vision"), as well as the costumes, production values, and 2D animation sequences, but found fault with Shaiman's and Wittman's songs as one of the film's "weaker points".

"[63] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that "Mary Poppins Returns looks, feels and sounds like a sales pitch" and "ratchets up more than the family's existential stakes", but praised the "emotional rawness" of Whishaw's acting; she called Shaiman's and Wittman's songs "the gravest disappointment", stressing that "there's nothing here with comparable melodic or lyrical staying power" to the Sherman Brothers' original 1964 songs.

[64] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle regarded the sequel as inferior to its 1964 original, feeling that the story did not deliver, and gave a mixed review on the songs.

He described some of the songs as "forgettable", "indifferent", and "dreadful", but singled out others, such as "Lovely London Sky" and "The Place Where the Lost Things Go", as some of the best; he stated "Mary Poppins Returns might have had a chance had the movie not tried to compete with the original in terms of scale.