It’s not uncommon to hear people opine of Mel Brooks’ classic comedies that they couldn’t be made today. Yet The Producers was remade as a successful musical and movie adaptation, a Spaceballs sequel is finally on the way, and there was even a cartoon loosely based on Blazing Saddles. So it’s not necessarily surprising that there are talks for another reboot, and perhaps a natural fit that deadpan comic (and lover of unlikely musical numbers) John Mulaney is likely to be involved.
No, Mulaney won’t be doing a Star Wars riff in the new Spaceballs — as far as anyone knows, anyway. Instead he’s being looked at to star in a much older property, and one that has attempted a franchise relaunch before. It isn’t a movie, or at least, it wasn’t when it began, but rather, the TV series that helped put brooks on the map as a major comedy writer.
Would you believe…we’re talking about Get Smart?
Here’s Why the Timing Is for a Get Smart Reboot Is… Smart
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Mulaney is in talks to star in a new remake of Get Smart scripted by Seth Grahame-Smith, who previously wrote the Dark Shadows remake for Tim Burton. No release date is yet set, nor a director attached. The original Get Smart was a show conceived in the ’60s based on the success of both James Bond and The Pink Panther‘s Inspector Clouseau. Agent Maxwell Smart, in a star-making turn by Don Adams, was a combination of both. Smart had the suits and the gadgets of James Bond — and a gorgeous girl in the form of Barbara Feldon’s Agent 99 — but the clumsiness and obliviousness of Clouseau. The shoe phone, the soup camera, and the acoustically inept “Cone of Silence” became signature gags, as Smart’s organization of CONTROL fought the forces of KAOS.
Brooks cowrote the show with Buck Henry, though he moved on after the first season and made his first film, The Producers. The series spawned a spinoff movie, The Nude Bomb, and a remake starring Steve Carell in 2008. Adams went on to star in the Inspector Gadget animated series, as a cyborg detective clearly inspired by the Smart character. For Mulaney’s remake, it’s notable that the next James Bond reboot is also currently being written. Should the movies proceed on a similar time frame, Maxwell Smart could be out in time to mock the same tropes the Bond film will likely embrace.
This also happened in 2008, which saw the release of Bond’s Quantum of Solace in addition to the Carell Get Smart. Despite relatively poor reviews, both films did well at the box office, with Quantum grossing $589 million internationally, and Smart $230 million. The latter spawned a direct-to-video spinoff based on two supporting characters, Masi Oka’s Bruce and Nate Torrence’s Lloyd. Carell declined to make a sequel after rejecting the initial script he was sent.
Enough time has passed that there might be more of an appetite for both Bond and parodies of him. If audiences genuinely like both movies, they could do even better than the last go-around.