‘You’ve Got Mail’: Jason Orley Directing New Take On Rom-Com For Warner Bros.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. is developing a new take on the classic romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, with Jason Orley aboard to direct.

Details as to the take are being kept under wraps. Orley, the filmmaker behind I Want You Back and Big Time Adolescence, is writing the current draft based on a screenplay by Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont (Can’t Hardly Wait, Josie and the Pussycats).

Coming off the 20th rom-com Beach Read, based on Emily Henry’s bestseller, Neal Moritz is producing alongside Tania Landau via Original Film.

Directed by Nora Ephron, You’ve Got Mail stars Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks as an independent children’s bookshop owner and the corporate bookselling magnate threatening her livelihood who become pen pals online, falling for each other without realizing they’re rivals.

Based on Miklós László’s play Parfumerie and its film adaptation The Shop Around the Corner, the rom-com captured the emergence of email as a medium for intimacy, long before dating apps were around, and spoke to the ’90s trend of big-box bookstores squeezing out independent shops. It released via Warner Bros. in December 1998 and grossed over $250M worldwide.

The film marked the third pairing for Hanks and Ryan, following Joe Versus the Volcano and Sleepless in Seattle, and the duo’s final film with the beloved Ephron.

Orley comes to You’ve Got Mail after wrapping post on his third feature, an Amazon comedy titled Close Personal Friends that stars Brie Larson, Jack Quaid, Lilly Collins and Henry Golding. Maximum Effort produced alongside Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, from a story conceived by Orley and Aptaker.

Previously, Orley collaborated with Aptaker and Berger on the romantic comedy I Want You Back, which he also directed for Amazon and which stars Charlie Day, Jenny Slate and Gina Rodriguez. His debut feature, the Pete Davidson comedy Big Time Adolescence, premiered in dramatic competition at the 2019 Sundance Film, where it was acquired by Hulu. Also known for work alongside Davidson on his Peacock show Bupkis and assorted comedy specials, he is repped by UTA, Rise Management and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.

No strangers to the rom-com, Kaplan & Elfont are known for writing and directing Can’t Hardly Wait and Josie and the Pussycats, as well as writing the films Made of Honor and Leap Year. Creative partners since meeting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, they set up two films at Paramount last year: the R-rated comedy Guys with No Friends, which was acquired in a bidding war, and the Dave Bautista rom-com The Romantic.

Kaplan and Elfont are repped by Entertainment 360 and Verve. Kaplan is also repped by Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern; Elfont by Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.