EXCLUSIVE: Talk about a dead ringer when it comes to casting: We’re getting word that 4x Emmy winner John Mulaney is eyeing to star as wisenheimer Agent Maxwell Smart in Warner Bros’ upcoming reimagining of Get Smart.
The project is early in the works with Now You See Me: Now You Don’t scribe Seth Grahame-Smith penning the screenplay. Chuck Roven and Andrew Lazar are producing.
The spy comedy series Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry and ran for 138 episodes from 1965-70. The first four seasons of the James Bond spoof aired on NBC, while the final season was shown on CBS. Don Adams starred as bumbling know-it-all agent Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) opposite Barbara Feldon (Agent 99) and Edward Platt, who played the Chief. They work for a secret U.S. government counterintelligence agency called Control, which was in a constant battle with evil org, Kaos. While Smart always has the upper hand over Kaos, he often was incompetent. Get Smart won seven Emmys including two for Outstanding Comedy Series.
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The opening sequence was a classic, showing Adams’ Smart walking through a ridiculous number of locked barricades before arriving at a phone booth, in which he picked up the phone and dialed a number, before dropping into Control headquarters. The series was followed by a 1980 feature film, The Nude Bomb, which was made without Brooks and Henry, as well as the 1989 made-for-TV sequel to the series, Get Smart, Again! whichstarred Adams and Feldon. For a beat there was a 1995 revival series starring Adams, Feldon, Andy Dick, Heather Morgan and Elaine Hendrix that aired on Fox for seven episodes in early 1995. Then there was a 2008 feature film adaptation from Warner Bros., produced by Roven and Lazar and starring Steve Carell as Smart, Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, Alan Arkin as the Chief and Dwayne Johnson as Agent 23. The pic was programmed as a summer tentpole and opened to $38.6M stateside and made $130.3M domestic, and $230.6M worldwide.
Mulaney also is a Critics Choice- and WGA Award-winning writer, comedian and actor. This summer, he became the first comedian ever to headline Wrigley Field and ended up selling out the iconic ballpark.
Mulaney just announced Mulaney Takes Manhattan, a special nine-show New York City run from January 7-15 that takes him to nine iconic venues over nine nights, from Comedy Cellar and Blue Note to Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall, culminating in a finale at Madison Square Garden. The shows are part of Mulaney’s latest stand-up tour, John Mulaney: Mister Whatever.
He has hosted Saturday Night Live six times and next will appear in Amazon MGM Studios’ upcoming David O. Russell feature Madden, starring Nicolas Cage as the famed football coach and NFL commentator.
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Mulaney won Emmys for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special in 2025 (SNL: 50th Anniversary), Writing for a Variety Special in 2023 (John Mulaney: Baby J), Writing for a Variety Special in 2018 (John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City Hall) and Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2011 (SNL).
Grahame-Smith is repped by WME and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. He has a story credit on the Warner Bros’ hit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which amassed more than $452M WW. He also wrote Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which grossed close to $247M at the global box office, and The Lego Batman Movie, which minted over $312M WW.
Mulaney is repped by WME and Shreck Rose Dapello.
