Julie Andrews is getting a Disney+ documentary, capping 60 years with Disney
Disney+ announced a documentary on Julie Andrews for 2027, from Martha director R.J. Cutler. It’s a fitting bookend for a career that started at Disney in 1964 with Mary Poppins, the role that won her an Oscar and made her a Disney Legend.
Julie Andrews is getting the documentary treatment, and it’s landing at the studio where her movie career began.
Disney announced the film Tuesday for a global Disney+ release in 2027. No title yet, and no exact date, but the shape of it is clear: a full-career portrait with rare archival footage and new interviews with Andrews herself, now 90 years old and still working.
It comes from director R.J. Cutler, who made Martha for Netflix and the Oscar-nominated Elton John: Never Too Late for Disney+. Disney is calling it the definitive look at her life, tracing her from British vaudeville as a kid all the way to global stardom.
For Disney to be the one telling this story makes a lot of sense. The two go back a very long way.
Mary Poppins made Julie Andrews a movie star, and won her an Oscar
Andrews’ film career didn’t just include Disney. It started with Disney.
Her very first movie was Walt Disney‘s Mary Poppins in 1964. Walt cast her after seeing her on Broadway in Camelot, and the gamble paid off in a way nobody could have scripted.
Andrews won the Academy Award for Best Actress for it. Her first film role, and she took home the Oscar. That’s about as good as a debut gets.
The role made her a household name overnight and set up the run that followed, including The Sound of Music the very next year. But Mary Poppins was the door, and Disney’s the one who opened it.
Julie Andrews is an official Disney Legend
Disney made the relationship official in the most formal way it can.
Andrews was named a Disney Legend, the company’s hall-of-fame honor for the people who shaped it. It’s the same recognition given to the actors, animators, and Imagineers Disney considers part of its core history.
She’s not a guest star in the Disney story. Disney counts her as family, and the Legend title is the paperwork that says so.
From Mary Poppins to The Princess Diaries and Enchanted
The nice part is that Andrews’ Disney work didn’t stop in the 1960s. It kept going for decades.
A whole younger generation met her through The Princess Diaries in 2001, where she played Queen Clarisse Renaldi, the elegant grandmother who tells Anne Hathaway’s character she’s secretly a princess. She came back for the 2004 sequel, and fans have spent years hoping for a third.
She also voiced Queen Lillian in the Shrek films, narrated Disney projects, and turned up as the storybook narrator in 2007’s Enchanted, a movie built entirely as Disney winking at its own fairy-tale history. Casting Andrews as the voice guiding that story was the whole joke, and it worked because she is that history.
Put it together and you’ve got a Disney résumé spanning from 1964 to the present. Not many people can say that.
When the Julie Andrews documentary hits Disney+
Here’s what’s actually locked in, which isn’t a ton yet.
The documentary streams on Disney+ worldwide sometime in 2027. The official title and release date are coming later. It’s produced by This Machine, a Sony Pictures Television studio, with Cutler directing and producing.
And Andrews isn’t slowing down while the world waits for it. At 90, she’s still voicing Lady Whistledown, the gossipy narrator of Netflix’s Bridgerton, and she’s got a new children’s book, Shy, co-written with her daughter, out in August.
So the documentary arrives as a celebration, not a farewell. Sixty years after Walt handed her an umbrella and a carpet bag, Disney’s giving Julie Andrews the last word on her own story. Feels about right.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
The Walt Disney Company (July 22, 2026), the official documentary announcement, the 2027 Disney+ window, R.J. Cutler’s involvement and quote, and the This Machine production credit
Laughing Place (July 22, 2026), Andrews’ current work on Bridgerton, the Shy book release, and her broader career context
Variety and TheWrap (July 22, 2026), the full producer credits and Cutler’s prior documentary work