See Donald Glover Replace Brad Pitt In First Look At Mr. And Mrs. Smith
While Amazon has successfully turned Prime Day into one of the biggest marketing events of the year, they aren’t content to merely use the event to sell products. The retail juggernaut also used the recent Prime Day to give us a sneak peek at many of the upcoming films they are planning to unleash on streaming consumers. And this includes a brief look at the Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV series reboot in which Donald Glove effectively replaces Brad Pitt in the title role.
Amazon Prime releases a preview of upcoming projects, including the first look at Donald Glover in the upcoming reboot series of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
While the brief preview for the reboot doesn’t show us much, it still gives a good feel for how much this series will hew close to the original and how much it will depart.
The original Mr. and Mrs. Smith starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and they played a happily-married couple who were keeping pretty big secrets: unbeknownst to one another, each of them was secretly a highly-trained assassin.
This might not have been a big deal except for the fact that, after they each screw up a job, these two are assigned to fight each other until “death do them part.” In this upcoming remake, Donald Glover has replaced Brad Pitt, and Maya Erskine has replaced Angelina Jolie.
While the brief preview for the reboot doesn’t show us much, it still gives a good feel for how much this series will hew close to the original and how much it will depart. For example, we see scenes of these two as a couple enjoying such mundane activities as riding an elevator and eating ice cream.
However, given the unspoken tension in the elevator scene, the smart money is that Donald Glover and Maya Erskine’s characters, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s characters before them, have just realized they are being forced to fight to the death.
Those who are worried about the new film deviating too much from the original will likely be reassured by the other scenes. We see the two characters chatting, and it’s clear that Donald Glover is doing his best to add his unique spin to the original iconic charm of Brad Pitt. Meanwhile, Maya Erskine seems cool and in control, which is the vibe that Angelina Jolie originally brought to her own character.
Will Mr. And Mrs. Smith Succeed?
Right now, it’s fair to call this attempt to reboot the original Mr. and Mrs. Smith film into a TV series something of a gamble. On one hand, it could be major fun to see Donald Glover and Maya Erskine stretch Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s cat-and-mouse film into an entire season.
On the other hand, the CBS series reboot of the classic action film True Lies only lasted one season, which may prove that audiences don’t want action films broken into bite-sized chunks, especially when the original stars have been replaced.
However, we’re optimists at heart, and Donald Glover certainly has enough charm to replace Brad Pitt, just as Maya Erskine has enough steely resolve to replace Angelina Jolie. The casting is solid, and we’re excited to see that these two will be joined by Parker Posey and Wagner Moura.
But if the writing and directing don’t match the talent of the acting, audiences may very well tune out in favor of simply watching the original film.
