You've Got Mail reboot: Jason Orley to direct for Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. is developing a new take on Nora Ephron’s 1998 romantic comedy *You’ve Got Mail*, with filmmaker Jason Orley set to direct and write the current draft. The project’s specifics remain under wraps for now, but it marks the latest pass at a story that has resonated across generations and formats for nearly 90 years. Deadline first reported the project on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. Variety and People confirmed it, and Entertainment Weekly also reported it.

According to Deadline's exclusive, Orley is drafting the script based on a previous screenplay by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, the writing team behind *Can’t Hardly Wait* and *Josie and the Pussycats*. Variety reported the same details about Orley’s role and the Kaplan/Elfont material, while People said the project is at Warner Bros. Pictures and that no release date has been announced. Producers Neal H. Moritz and Tania Landau will shepherd the film under Moritz’s Original Film banner.

Who is Jason Orley?

Jason Orley is a writer-director whose feature debut, *Big Time Adolescence* (2019), premiered in dramatic competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was later acquired by Hulu. He followed that with the 2022 Amazon romantic comedy *I Want You Back*, starring Charlie Day, Jenny Slate and Gina Rodriguez, working with frequent collaborators Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger. Orley has also directed six episodes of Pete Davidson’s 2023 Peacock series *Bupkis* and has collaborated with Davidson on three comedy specials. He recently wrapped post-production on his third feature, *Close Personal Friends*, an Amazon comedy starring Brie Larson, Jack Quaid, Lily Collins and Henry Golding, produced by Maximum Effort with Aptaker and Berger, from a story by Orley and Aptaker. Orley is represented by UTA and Rise Management.

Who wrote the script?

Orley is writing the current draft, drawing from an earlier screenplay by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. The Kaplan/Elfont duo is known for the late-’90s teen comedy *Can’t Hardly Wait* and *Josie and the Pussycats*. The two met as students at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Who is producing?

Neal H. Moritz is producing the new *You’ve Got Mail* alongside Tania Landau through Moritz’s Original Film. Moritz is a veteran producer whose credits include major franchises like *Fast & Furious*, *Jump Street* and *Sonic the Hedgehog*, as well as TV series such as *Prison Break* and *The Boys*. Among his earlier film credits are *I Know What You Did Last Summer* and *Cruel Intentions*. Deadline also notes he is coming off the romantic comedy *Beach Read*.

What was the original *You've Got Mail* about?

Released in 1998 and directed by Nora Ephron from a screenplay she co-wrote with her sister Delia Ephron, *You’ve Got Mail* follows Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), an executive at a national big-box bookstore chain, and Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan), the owner of a beloved independent children’s bookstore called The Shop Around the Corner. The pair are adversaries in person as Fox’s superstore moves into the neighborhood, but unknowingly fall for each other as anonymous correspondents online. The title comes from the greeting AOL users got when a new email arrived. The ensemble also featured Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton, Steve Zahn and Dave Chappelle.

How did the 1998 film do?

The Warner Bros. release arrived in U.S. theaters on December 18, 1998, opening at No. 1 in North America with an $18.4 million debut. It went on to gross approximately $250.8 million worldwide against an estimated $65 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film of Nora Ephron’s career. The movie filmed primarily on Manhattan’s Upper West Side between February and June 1998 and captured the late-’90s cultural moment when email was emerging as a new conduit for intimacy, alongside a retail landscape in which big-box bookstores were challenging independent shops.

Where did the story come from?

The 1998 film is an adaptation in a long line of retellings rooted in playwright Miklós László’s 1937 Hungarian work, *Parfumerie*. Ernst Lubitsch brought the story to the screen in 1940 as *The Shop Around the Corner*, starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as combative co-workers who don’t realize they are falling in love through anonymous letters. That film was selected for the National Film Registry in 1999. MGM reimagined it in 1949 as the musical *In the Good Old Summertime* with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, set in turn-of-the-century Chicago. In 1963, the narrative became the Broadway musical *She Loves Me* (by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joe Masteroff), whose 2016 Broadway revival was the first Broadway show to be live-streamed. Nora Ephron’s *You’ve Got Mail* updated the anonymous letters to email, translating the story’s timeless themes to the AOL age. The new project would represent the latest version of a story that has been retold for nearly 90 years.

Are Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan involved?

No reporting indicates that Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan are attached to this new project. No cast has been announced. Hanks and Ryan starred in the 1998 film as Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, marking their third big-screen pairing after *Joe Versus the Volcano* (1990) and *Sleepless in Seattle* (1993), and their last collaboration with Nora Ephron.

Why remake it now?

Deadline framed the fresh take as an opportunity to consider how *You’ve Got Mail* might look decades after AOL’s heyday, noting that the original treated email as a new medium for intimacy long before dating apps existed, and that it spoke to the ’90s trend of big-box bookstores squeezing out independent shops. How the new version handles either theme has not been disclosed. The AV Club pointed out that *13 Going On 30* is also getting a new version at Netflix. NewsCubby has recently covered other revivals across TV, including HBO’s five-episode return of *Girls*, a new *Glee* project, and Hulu’s upcoming *X-Files* from Ryan Coogler.

Related: 'Glee' reboot: Who's confirmed, who's in talks and where to watch, HBO orders five-episode Girls revival with Lena Dunham and returning cast and Hulu orders Ryan Coogler's new X-Files: what is confirmed so far.

What we know

• Warner Bros. is developing a new *You’ve Got Mail*.
• Jason Orley is set to direct and is writing the current draft.
• The script is based on a prior take by Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont.
• Neal H. Moritz and Tania Landau are producing under Original Film.
• The project was first reported by Deadline and confirmed by Variety and People, with EW also reporting it.

What we don't know yet

• Cast: No actors are attached or announced.
• Plot: No story details have been disclosed.
• Release date: none announced.
• Distribution strategy: Unknown whether the film is intended for theaters or streaming.
• Timing: No production or scheduling details have been shared.

What's next

Official updates on casting, plot and release plans would come from Warner Bros. and the producing team. NewsCubby will update this story as details become available.

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*ARCHIVE PHOTO: Nora Ephron, who directed the 1998 original, at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Not the current project. Photo: David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 (cropped).*

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Photo credits

The video uses real photographs under Creative Commons licenses that allow commercial use (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0). No studio stills, posters, film footage or news-agency photos are used. Edits: crop/resize, slow pan/zoom, dark gradients, captions, labels and NewsCubby graphics; faces are not altered. No endorsement by the people shown or the photographers is implied. NewsCubby's adaptations of CC BY-SA photos are offered under the same CC BY-SA license version as the original.

| Time (s) | Image | Creator / license | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 0.0-2.8 | Warner Bros. Studios water tower, Burbank, Calif. (2020) | Chris Yarzab: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) | Wikimedia Commons | | cover; 7.7-9.3 | Tom Hanks at the Sully Japan premiere (2016) - star of the 1998 original | Dick Thomas Johnson: CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/) | Wikimedia Commons | | cover; 9.3-11.2 | Meg Ryan at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival - star of the 1998 original | David Shankbone: CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) | Wikimedia Commons | | 14.0-16.0 | Bookshelves at the Strand Bookstore, New York (2017) | Acebarry: CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en/) | Wikimedia Commons | | 16.0-19.4 | Producer Neal Moritz at San Diego Comic-Con (2010) | Gage Skidmore: CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) | Wikimedia Commons | | 19.4-21.0 | Brownstones on West 69th Street, Upper West Side (2011) | Tony Hisgett: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) | Wikimedia Commons.jpg) | | 21.0-23.4; article photo | Nora Ephron at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival | David Shankbone: CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) | Wikimedia Commons | | 23.4-26.3 | Books of Wonder children's bookstore, Manhattan (2024) - illustration, not a film location | Smallboulderthesizeofalargeboulder: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) | Wikimedia Commons | | 26.3-29.2 (behind $250M card) | Cafe Lalo, 201 W. 83rd St., Upper West Side (2005) | Rob Young: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) | Wikimedia Commons.jpg) | | 31.6-33.9 | Cafe Lalo, 201 W. 83rd St., Upper West Side (2005) | Rob Young: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) | Wikimedia Commons.jpg) |

**Video cover/thumbnail:** Tom Hanks (Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.5) and Meg Ryan (David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons, shown as the stars of the 1998 film; neither has been announced for the new project. Cropped, lit, dark panel, text and NewsCubby logo added.

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