John Mulaney is circling the role of Agent Maxwell Smart in Warner Bros.’ new movie reboot of “Get Smart,” a project that remains in its early stages of development. Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote 2025’s “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” has been tapped to write the screenplay, while Andrew Lazar and Chuck Roven, the producers behind the studio’s 2008 film adaptation, are attached to steer this version as well.
The character originated on television in 1965, when Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created the spy spoof for NBC. Don Adams played the endearingly incompetent Agent Smart across 138 episodes, working alongside Barbara Feldon’s unflappable Agent 99 and Edward Platt as their exasperated boss at the counterintelligence agency Control, forever squaring off against the villainous organization Kaos. The show ran until 1970 and picked up seven Emmy Awards, including three acting wins for Adams.
Warner Bros. first brought the franchise to theaters in 2008 with Steve Carell in the title role and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. That version opened to $38.6 million domestically and finished its run with $230.6 million worldwide, cementing it as a summer box office hit. Earlier attempts to revive the property fared less well: a 1980 film dropped Brooks and Henry from the credits entirely, a 1989 TV movie reunited Adams and Feldon for one night only, and a 1995 Fox series lasted just seven episodes.
Mulaney, a four-time Emmy winner for his comedy writing, spent 2025 hosting Netflix’s “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney” for a 12-episode run and has a nine-date New York stand-up engagement, “Mulaney Takes Manhattan,” scheduled to begin in January.
He next appears in David O. Russell’s sports drama “Madden,” playing Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins. Casting insiders note that Mulaney’s clipped, self-aware delivery offers a sharper contrast to Carell’s earlier take on the character, which leaned on physical comedy and wide-eyed earnestness — a shift that could push the new film closer to the deadpan tone Brooks and Henry built into the original series.
