John Mulaney may be preparing to answer the call from CONTROL. The comedian and four-time Emmy winner is circling the role of Agent Maxwell Smart in a new Warner Bros. movie reboot of Get Smart. The project is still in its earliest phase, so this is not a locked casting announcement, nor is there a release date, director, additional cast, or story outline attached at this stage. But the possibility of Mulaney stepping into one of comedy television’s most enduringly clumsy spy roles is a very specific kind of intriguing.
Maxwell Smart is not a conventional action hero who happens to have jokes. He is the joke-prone obstacle standing between an absurdly elaborate enemy plot and the people supposedly trying to stop it. That distinction is central to why Get Smart lasted: the comedy lives in the gap between Smart’s confidence and his actual competence, while the larger spy-movie machinery keeps moving around him. Mulaney’s precise, tightly wound comic persona could be a fascinating match for a character who is convinced he has the situation handled just before the situation catches fire.
Seth Grahame-Smith is set to write the screenplay. His recent credited work includes 2025’s Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. Andrew Lazar and Chuck Roven are attached as producers. Those are the concrete creative details presently available, and they underline just how early the new Get Smart is. A movie can evolve substantially between an actor circling a lead role and a production beginning in earnest, so fans should regard every element beyond the current attachments as unsettled.
A spy spoof with deep television roots
The original Get Smart arrived on television in 1965, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. It ran through 1970 for 138 episodes, turning Cold War espionage clichés into a broad, gadget-heavy comedy universe. Don Adams played Maxwell Smart, the nominally brilliant secret agent whose missions were regularly endangered by his own blunders. Barbara Feldon co-starred as Agent 99, the capable operative who frequently brought the needed level head to CONTROL’s assignments. Edward Platt played the Chief, Smart’s increasingly exasperated superior.
The premise was built to parody the polished spy entertainment of its time, but it succeeded because its characters gave the punchlines a framework. CONTROL and its adversaries could deploy secret devices, coded messages, hidden entrances, and wildly impractical plans; Smart could then misread, mishandle, or overcomplicate the entire operation. Agent 99’s poise offered an essential counterbalance. She was never merely a bystander to Smart’s chaos, and any contemporary revival that understands the property will need to preserve that dynamic rather than treat it as a relic of the 1960s.
The show’s awards record shows how strongly the formula landed. Get Smart collected seven Emmy wins during its original run. Adams won three acting Emmys, while the program received three wins for Outstanding Comedy Series. Those results do not automatically make a modern film easier to construct. In fact, they illustrate the size of the comic legacy any new Maxwell Smart will inherit.
Why Mulaney could fit the assignment
Mulaney has spent years refining a stage presence based on meticulous language, escalating details, and a calm delivery that often makes the underlying absurdity funnier. That is not the same performance style Adams brought to Maxwell Smart, and it should not be. A reboot does not need a direct impression of the original star to honor what made the character work. It needs an actor who can make misplaced certainty entertaining, keep a far-fetched situation understandable, and let the audience recognize the disaster arriving moments before the protagonist does.
His recent screen work and hosting have also kept him in front of audiences outside the stand-up format. In 2025, he hosted Netflix’s anti-talk show Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, which ran for 12 episodes. He is also scheduled to begin a nine-show New York comedy engagement, Mulaney Takes Manhattan, in January. On the film side, his next role is listed as Trip Hawkins, the Electronic Arts founder, in David O. Russell’s sports biopic Madden.
Related coverage includes John Mulaney Circling Maxwell Smart in ‘Get Smart’ Movie Reboot.
There is a small Warner Bros. connection in Mulaney’s public history as well. At the 2024 Governors Awards, he joked that he had auditioned to play “Young Cop” in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, another Warner Bros. release. Whether the Smart role ultimately comes together is a much bigger question than that anecdote, but it adds a mildly surreal footnote to the prospect of his first major collaboration with the studio being a trip through CONTROL headquarters.
The 2008 film left a notable footprint
This would not be the franchise’s first attempt to translate the phone-booth-sized spy world to cinemas. A 2008 Get Smart film put Steve Carell in the title role and cast Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, and Terence Stamp also appeared. Peter Segal, whose directing credits include 50 First Dates, directed the film.
That version opened with $38 million and went on to earn $230 million worldwide. Its reported budget was $80 million, with those figures not adjusted for inflation. The performance made it a moderate theatrical success and demonstrated that the core concept could operate beyond its original television era. At the same time, a new reboot would have to distinguish itself from both predecessors: the Don Adams-led series remains the foundation, while the Carell film is still a significant modern reference point for many viewers.
That dual inheritance creates a creative challenge. The newest film cannot simply repeat familiar gags and call it a day, but it also cannot drain away the heightened foolishness that makes Get Smart recognizable. Spy stories have changed dramatically since the 1960s, and audiences now bring decades of franchise literacy to every coded earpiece, surveillance system, double agent, and countdown device. A modern Get Smart can use that accumulated genre knowledge as fuel, provided its comedy comes from character and timing rather than only from pointing out that spy movies are silly.
What remains unknown
Most of the essential questions have no public answer yet. There is no confirmed Agent 99, no announced Chief, no indicated villain, and no information about whether the screenplay will place CONTROL and KAOS in a present-day setting or pursue a period flavor. There is also no stated production timetable. Mulaney is only circling the lead, which means the role has not been formally confirmed.
The Agent 99 casting will be especially consequential if the film proceeds. Feldon’s performance was integral to the original show’s balance, and Hathaway’s interpretation was likewise a major component of the 2008 feature. The character requires agency, intelligence, and comic chemistry; she should never be positioned as merely the person who waits for Smart to accidentally solve something. The Chief, meanwhile, is another deceptively important part of the architecture: a straight-faced authority figure makes Smart’s confidence seem even more deliriously misplaced.
For pop-culture collectors and fans, early-stage reboot news can also renew attention around the franchise’s earlier screen history, even when no new physical release has been revealed. That pattern is visible across television properties with durable audience interest; for example, recent 4K UHD and Steelbook plans for The Rings of Power show how current franchise momentum can intersect with physical-media collecting. No comparable Get Smart collectible or home-media announcement is attached to this reboot at present.
A reboot with a narrow but promising target
There is plenty of room for skepticism whenever a familiar title returns, particularly one so attached to iconic performances and a particular era of television comedy. Yet Mulaney is an understandable name to explore for Maxwell Smart. The part needs a performer comfortable being verbally nimble, physically imperiled, and gloriously wrong while still retaining enough charm that the audience wants CONTROL to keep sending him into the field.
For now, the clearest takeaway is also the simplest: Warner Bros. is developing a new Get Smart film, Grahame-Smith is set to write it, Lazar and Roven are producing, and Mulaney is being considered for Maxwell Smart. Until further casting or production details emerge, fans should keep their shoe phones on standby—but perhaps avoid relying on them for a confirmed release date.
