You’ve Got Mail reboot is in development - what does that even look like in the current era?
The 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is getting the reboot treatment, but for a movie that is so specific to the nascent days of the internet, how do you even update that for now?
What does a You’ve Got Mail reboot even look like in the current era?
We’re about to find out because the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan rom-com is getting a makeover with a modern update, which is in development now, according to Deadline.
The original, which wasn’t even the original, was released in 1998 with America’s favourite cinema couple as two rival bookshop owners who fall in love over email despite their in-person antagonism, neither knowing that the other is their digital pen-pal.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The movie was extremely of that moment. It was the nascent days of online communications with strangers when most things were more innocent.
People’s profiles were quaint handles such as “Shopgirl” and “NY152” and they met in chatrooms (remember those?). It was almost all text-based (images took too long to download over dial-up), no one posted their photos, and few were shouting about how they’ve been wronged.
Also the idea of an independent bookshop trying to fight against the big chain store (think: Borders or Barnes and Noble) is cute. Rewatching the movie even a few years later and you’re screaming at the screen, “watch out, Amazon is coming for both of you!”.
So what does a 2028 You’ve Got Mail look like, because realistically that is the earliest this movie would come out? Are Kathleen and Joe running rival data centres? Or maybe cafes being hammered into non-existence by rising overheads and UberEats taking a 40 per cent cut?
Perhaps she owns a wellness spa and he is schilling unapproved peptides to insecure manbabies? What if they’re both social media influencers (ahem, sorry, content creators) who trade on hiding their real identities through AI-generated avatars?
How do two people in the late 2020s organically and realistically hide their online identities from someone they also know in real life, and have two separate relationships with each other?
Given how easy and now-natural to just google someone, the rebooted film would have to really contrive to make the set-up work.
Or, here’s a thought. Maybe it goes back to You’ve Got Mail’s roots, as in, the actual source material. That’s right, Nora Ephron’s 1998 movie wasn’t the original-original, not by decades.
The film was inspired by a 1937 Hungarian played Parfumerie which was previously adapted twice, once in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner (which Ephron referenced as the name of Kathleen’s bookshop) with Jimmy Stewart, and again in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime with Judy Garland.
In both earlier films, the story is set almost entirely within a shop (one a leathergoods retailer, another a music store) with the would-be lovers as combative co-workers who unbeknownst to each other are secretly pen-pals.
Despite the best efforts of e-commerce giants and convenience-hungry consumers, physical retailers still exist, even if the future is looking grim (fare thee well, David Jones, we hardly knew ye).
So, maybe there’s a version of this story in which Kathleen and Joe, probably renamed as Olivia and Brodie, are the managers of concession stands inside a department store that has seen better days.
In order to boost staff morale, the department store decides to hold a Secret Santa scheme, except you don’t get to know the name of the person you picked, and the task is to discover more about the person you’re gifting through an anonymous social media network hosted on the company intranet.
Look, not the best pitch, but hopefully the filmmakers have a better idea.
According to Deadline, the draft screenplay was written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, a couple of older Gen X-ers best known for work they did around the time of You’ve Got Mail, having written the scripts for Can’t Hardly Wait and Josie and the Pussycats.
Their last credited screenplay was the 2010 rom-com Leap Year, a movie its own star Matthew Goode later called “turgid” but that he had a nice time working close to home and that “he got paid”.
The director attached to this reboot is Jason Orley, who is apparently giving the script a once-over. Orley is best known for working with Pete Davidson on his stand-up specials, and directed the passable 2022 rom-com I Want You Back.
