6 Reasons Why 'You've Got Mail' Calls For An Unnecessary Remake

The 1998 romantic classic You’ve Got Mail turns 15 on December 18. If Hollywood is thinking of doing a remake, you can kind of see where they’re coming from.

1. The idea of meeting someone in an over-30 online chatroom is even more archaic than meeting someone on Friendster.

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Online dating in You've Got Mail is treated like some sort of novelty. Meg Ryan's Kathleen Kelly is almost embarrassed to admit to her Shop Around the Corner friends that she's chatting online with someone.

But today, it seems like nearly everyone has taken to the Internet for love at some point. According to statistics on online dating, there are nearly 20 million people on eHarmony.com and 15 million people on Match.com. In fact, apparently marriage rates are up because of the Internet, so meeting a significant other online isn't so rare anymore.

2. Bloggers and the Huffington Post could have saved Shop Around the Corner.

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Kathleen Kelly’s boyfriend Frank Navasky, played by the adorable Greg Kinnear, couldn’t save his girlfriend’s bookstore, even with publicity in his newspaper column and appearances on Sydney Ann’s talk show.

In 2013, there are online campaigns to save everything. Something like “Save the Shop Around the Corner” would easily go viral and people would find a way to keep the store afloat. After all, the Internet got Betty White to host “Saturday Night Live” and the Muppets nearly scored the Oscars after an aggressive Facebook campaign.

3. Fox Books would probably no longer be in business in 2013.

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When You’ve Got Mail came out, Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores were at the height of their popularity, making the fictional Fox Books in the film highly recognizable for its “cheap books and legal addictive stimulants.” Today, Borders is kaput, and some speculate Barnes & Noble could be next.

Plus, 1998 was a time before e-books, when the Nook was just a gleam in Barnes & Noble’s eye. In 2013, not only are e-books becoming more and more popular, but Amazon has also reported that Kindle e-book sales have overtaken physical book sales, so the book business is not the same as it was in the late ‘90s. An update of this film would probably have to include a different business since both Fox Books and Shop Around the Corner would be turned into something really sad like a Baby Gap.

4. Less and less people are communicating through laptops.

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Both Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox used laptops to give hypothetical bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils to each other, which was pretty progressive for a time period that still mostly relied on desktops.

However, it’s 2013---smartphones are killing the laptop eco-system. In fact, they’ve overtaken laptops as the most popular way to connect to Wi-Fi hot spots. So the update would most likely need tablets and smartphones. Siri could even have a hand in getting Kathleen and Joe together.

5. With the passing of Nora Ephron, a new female voice could take the helm.

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Nora Ephron has been the voice of romantic comedy for the past 25 years, penning three iconic romances: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail. But with the passing of Ephron in 2012, there’s now room for a new voice of a generation, even if women are still less likely to sell a spec script than their male counterparts.

Elizabeth Meriwether. Tina Fey. Mindy Kaling. There are many female writers who could take over where Ephron left off.

6. You’ve Got Mail is already a remake of two other movies, so it’s a story that evolves and gets retold.

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Sure, sisters Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron have their names on the script, but so does Miklos Laszlo who wrote Parfumerie, the play on which the movie is based. This play became the Jimmy Stewart movie Shop Around the Corner in 1940, and then in 1949, this movie was turned into a Judy Garland musical called In the Good Old Summertime.

The story evolves with technology and the times. Parfumerie demonstrated love through letters, You’ve Got Mail love through email--naturally, a new form of communication could be explored, as there are many different modern forms a remake could utilize. Text message. Snapchat. The possibilities are endless, even if YGM’s George says that “The Internet is just another way of being rejected by women.”