New film looks at Walt Disney — pre-Mickey Mouse

Thomas Ian Nicholas as a young Walt Disney in “Walt Before Mickey.”

Last year, the acclaimed film “Saving Mr. Banks,” focused on Walt Disney’s long years of professionally wooing “Mary Poppins” creator P.L. Travers — a movie that showcased Tom Hanks portrayal of an already-successful Disney.

The upcoming “Walt Before Mickey,” is an independent drama that chronicles a pre-Depression era decade in Disney’s life pre-Mickey Mouse, when he was struggling financially as he worked to build the studio that would eventually turn him into one of the world’s most famous brands.

Deadline.comhas released a trailer for the film starring Thomas Ian Nicholas (“American Pie”) as Disney and Jon Heder (“Napoleon Dynamite”) as his brother and longtime business partner Roy Disney. The film, which has yet to finalize a theatrical-release distribution deal, is based on the 2011 book, “Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928,” written by Timothy S. Susanin, with a forward by Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter, who died last November.