Mr. & Mrs. Smith Trailer Unleashes Donald Glover Action Thriller Reboot
It’s no secret that our media landscape is littered with media reboots and reimaginings: shows like Star Trek: Picard and the new Frasier series have been released to tickle the nostalgic member berries of their respective core audiences.
Amazon Prime is rebooting Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine starring
With that being said, we were surprised to discover that Amazon Prime was rebooting the 2005 Mr. and Mrs. Smith film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie into a television series starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine.
It’s the last franchise reboot we were expecting, and the latest trailer brings one more very pleasant surprise: the show looks very good.
This ambitious new series has been in development since 2021, and it has had some major twists and turns behind the scenes. For example, while Donald Glover has always been the first choice to play the sexy secret agent originally played by Brad Pitt, his female counterpart was originally going to be played by Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The Donald Glover Mr. and Mrs. Smith series has been in development since 2021
She eventually left the series: The Guardian reports that she did so over “clashing creative styles,” but somewhat scandalously, this departure became one more bit of evidence that Waller-Bridge has seemingly been doing little to nothing in exchange for getting a cool $20 million per year from Amazon.
After Waller-Bridge left the Mr. and Mrs. Smith series, she was replaced by PEN15 creator and costar Maya Erskine. She seems to be a very solid choice for the role.
The trailer showcases that she has a very solid chemistry with costar Donald Glover, and the two of them alternate between being very adept at gunning down targets and being hilariously bad at maintaining their cover.
In one memorable scene from the trailer, the two of them try (very poorly) to convince someone they are computer software engineers rather than secret agents.
Speaking of their secretive careers, it seems like the biggest change the series makes to the original Mr. and Mrs. Smith story is that our titular married couple is very aware that they are secret agents and are frequently seen working together for the same agency.
In the trailer, we see the duo doing things like moving a body together and recovering in a helicopter (covered in blood, no less) after a major battle. This is a departure from the original film in which Mr. and Mrs. Smith worked for rival agencies and didn’t know they were each secret agents until each was assigned to kill the other.
The next biggest change the show makes to the Mr. and Mrs. Smith formula is that their onscreen marriage is a sham. They are actually complete strangers who are pretending to be married as cover for their mission.
That’s why we see Donald Glover remind his partner that “we’re married” by showing her his wedding band, and despite the two of them looking cozy together in a few scenes, she reminds him that “I’m not in this for the romance.”
In the original movie, the couple were actually married, and their orders to kill one another helped to spice up an otherwise very dull relationship.
Donald Glover’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series premieres on Prime on February 2
While it’s a surprise move for Amazon to transform such an old film into a television series, it looks like the new show captures the spirit of the original movie: it has sexy leads, great action, and a few splashes of killer action for flavor.
Considering that Mr. and Mrs. Smith premieres on Prime on February 2, it might even be the perfect show for couples to binge on Valentine’s Day. If so, let’s hope the couples watching at home don’t end up trying to kill one another as we saw Brad Pitt and Jolie do onscreen in 2005.
