You want to know how old I am? I saw You’ve Got Mail in the theater. I actually disliked that film at the time, although it’s grown on me in subsequent rewatches over the years. My opinion: the story of You’ve Got Mail is painful and sad, but Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’ chemistry carries it. I would even argue that You’ve Got Mail is Tom Hanks’ sexiest role. Come on – the scene in her apartment when she has a cold? When he lightly puts his fingers on her mouth right as she’s about to bitch him out? HOT. But yeah, the whole plot hinges on his big-box bookstore putting her small, children’s bookstore out of business. That’s not romantic. So, why are we talking about You’ve Got Mail? Because they’re remaking it. Oh my god.

What would You’ve Got Mail look like decades on from the heyday of AOL? We’re about to find out, as Warner Bros. is developing a new take on the classic romantic comedy, 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.

[From Deadline]

On one side, I’m hopeful that we’re seeing a revival of mid-budget rom-coms. I also think it’s fine to keep making modern adaptations of Parfumerie and The Shop Around the Corner, but the problem is that they’re calling this a remake of You’ve Got Mail specifically. And I know they’re not going to do Nora Ephron justice. So… yeah… I’m all for a rom-com revival but I’m worried about this specific remake. And how can they even do “pen pals” for a new generation?? While the youths are on dating apps and they text without meeting people in real life, there’s no real DRAMA to it. I’m trying not to point out Gen Z’s illiteracy crisis but the plot literally hinges on the written word! How do you modernize that? Two people endlessly leaving each other voice notes?

Also: One of the great things about the OG You’ve Got Mail is that Ryan and Hanks were not young people flitting around NYC. Ryan was in her late 30s, Hanks was in his mid-40s and they were both playing their ages!! To get that kind of heat, they’d have to cast elder Millennials, not Gen Zers.

Screencaps courtesy of the trailer, additional photos courtesy of Cover Images.