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Warner Bros. is developing a reboot of You’ve Got Mail, with Jason Orley attached to direct and write a new draft, Variety reports. The project would revisit the 1998 romantic comedy that starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as rival booksellers who fall for each other online.
The report identifies a filmmaker and producers, but leaves the plot, casting and production and release timing open. That distinction matters for fans of Nora Ephron’s film: an attachment to a reboot does not establish which characters or features of the original will return.
The material also has a history beyond the Hanks and Ryan movie. Its origins go back to a 1937 play that had already been adapted for the screen before the story reached the age of online messaging.
Who is working on the reboot?
Orley is preparing his screenplay from an earlier take by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. Neal Moritz and Tania Landau are set to produce under the Original Film banner. With the script still being drafted, the reported project is at a development stage rather than ready for audiences.
Orley’s film credits include Big Time Adolescence, his feature directorial debut in 2019, and 2022’s I Want You Back. He also directed six episodes of Pete Davidson’s 2023 series Bupkis and has collaborated with Davidson on three comedy specials.
More recently, he wrapped post-production on the Amazon comedy Close Personal Friends. Its cast includes Brie Larson, Jack Quaid, Lilly Collins and Henry Golding.
For viewers looking for clues about the new film, those credits establish Orley’s previous work, not the approach his draft will take. The known writing history is limited to his work on a draft based on Kaplan and Elfont’s earlier take.
Why the 1998 film is only part of the story
Ephron’s film gave its romance a workplace conflict: Hanks plays Joe Fox, whose large bookstore threatens the independent children’s bookshop owned by Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly. While the two clash in person, they begin an anonymous relationship online.
That setup brings together two distinct features of the 1998 version. The bookshops put the characters on opposing sides of a business rivalry, while AOL Messenger gives them a way to connect without knowing who is on the other end. Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton and Steve Zahn are also in the cast.
The film reached audiences around Christmas in 1998 and earned $250 million against a budget of about $65 million, according to Variety. That commercial record helps explain the prominence of the Hanks and Ryan version among the works associated with the title.
Its source material is older. You’ve Got Mail was inspired by a 1937 play by Miklós László, which had previously been adapted as the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.
The span from play to 1940 film to 1998 romantic comedy offers a useful way to distinguish the underlying material from Ephron’s particular version. The earlier screen adaptation predates both Joe and Kathleen’s online courtship and the technology associated with it in You’ve Got Mail.
That history does not settle what the reported reboot will draw from either film. For now, the development gives the project a director and a writing process; the story audiences would see remains to be revealed.
