Warner Bros. is taking another swing at Get Smart, and the casting chatter today has a familiar face attached to Agent 86. John Mulaney is being eyed to play Maxwell Smart in the studio’s early-stage movie reboot of the Mel Brooks and Buck Henry spy spoof.
Deadline first reported the talk this afternoon, with Variety quickly confirming that Mulaney is circling the lead. The project is still in very early development. Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, is penning the screenplay, with Chuck Roven and Andrew Lazar producing — the same producing team behind Warner Bros.’ 2008 Get Smart film.
That 2008 take starred Steve Carell as Smart opposite Anne Hathaway’s Agent 99, with Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin and Terence Stamp in the mix, and collected about $230 million worldwide. The original TV series ran from 1965 to 1970 with Don Adams as the bumbling-but-victorious Control agent, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Edward Platt as the Chief, racking up seven Emmys along the way.
Mulaney would be a tonal swing into deadpan stand-up energy for a role defined by Adams’ clipped catchphrases and Carell’s physical comedy. The four-time Emmy winner just sold out Wrigley Field this summer, has a nine-show New York run lined up for January under Mulaney Takes Manhattan, and next appears in David O. Russell’s Madden. Nothing is locked — early-stage means schedules, deals and Agent 99 casting can still move — but the rumor has already bounced across the major trades tonight for a reason. On paper, it is an almost cartoonishly clean casting match.