Nothing prepared me for the first time James L. Brooks disappointed me.
How Do You Know (2010) wasn't just a miss—it felt like watching a master pianist hit every wrong note at Carnegie Hall. Painful. So when news dropped that Brooks is staging a comeback with Ella McCay, a political drama set to release December 19, 2025, I braced for cautious optimism.
But here's the thing: even a bruised legend is still a legend.
Ella McCay isn't just a movie; it's a high-stakes gamble. Brooks is 84 years old. His last three major works (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good As It Gets) weren't just successful—they helped define the emotional language of late 20th-century cinema. In a year already packed with heavy-hitting awards contenders, Disney/20th Century's decision to bump the release from September to the prime Oscar corridor screams: They think it's good. Really good.
With Emma Mackey leading an ensemble cast that reads like a Criterion Channel fever dream (Rebecca Hall, Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and more), Ella McCay isn't aiming small. It's about an idealistic young politician balancing her personal life while prepping to succeed her mentor—an almost laughably Brooksian setup, dripping with the messy heart-versus-head dilemmas he loves.
Robert Elswit—who just turned Ripley into a black-and-white slow-burn masterpiece—handles cinematography. If his work here mirrors the haunting intimacy he gave There Will Be Blood, Ella McCay could look as sharp as it feels.
Hollywood loves a comeback story almost as much as it loves a nostalgia trip. Think about it—Martin Scorsese's The Irishman was sold as a magnum opus, only to be quietly memed into the “everyone looks tired” corner of Netflix. Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood leaned hard into Golden Age nostalgia but also carried the sting of an artist confronting his own twilight.
What makes Ella McCay different? Brooks isn't mythologizing the past. He's interrogating the future—specifically, the messiness of leadership and legacy, at a time when American politics feels like a dumpster fire with a TikTok account.
And while modern Hollywood seems to believe political dramas must either be bone-dry (The Report, Vice) or neon-lit satire (Don't Look Up), Brooks' great strength has always been threading humor, heartbreak, and quiet rage into something disarmingly real.
The uncomfortable truth?
Ella McCay might not just be Brooks' return—it could be his farewell. And if so, it's shaping up to be a hell of a swan song.
Would you bet on an 84-year-old legend to out-hustle Hollywood's young guns?
Comment below—or better yet, place your bets now.
