“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” cocreator Francesca Sloane said she doesn’t blame “Internet trolls” for questioning the forthcoming Amazon reboot of the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie-starring film. But she promised a fresh take that goes in a new direction from the 2005 blockbuster, twisting the expected tropes.
Sloane, who cocreated the series alongside Donald Glover after working with him on “Atlanta,” even admitted she thought Glover was “kidding around” when he first proposed the idea of a new “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”
“Based on the creative work that both Donald and I have done in the past, writing a series based on a rom-com action spy thriller felt like an odd fit for us,” she wrote in an open letter on Friday ahead of the reboot’s Feb. 2 premiere. “But Donald, in his Donald way, expressed that part of the excitement in taking this on was that it was a big swing.”
Still, as Sloane and Glover asked questions interrogating how they could revitalize the action flick with a new take, “so did the Internet trolls.”
“Once we were announced, we saw the comment, ‘Who needs this show?’ We didn’t blame them,” she continued. “In a culture heavily inundated with remakes, this was a reasonable reaction. No one would need a show that retold the same blockbuster movie. But what we set out to do was to make something wholly original.”
As Glover and Sloane dug into how they could “subvert the spy and action genre by whole-heartedly focusing on the characters, on the relationship, on their marriage,” they used their modern reflections on humanity, morality and loneliness as the show’s backbone. They also looked to pose a “boatload of philosophical questions.”
“What would a series feel like if our heroes weren’t the two most beautiful people on the planet, but instead, were two lonely people, two underdogs, wanting more from life than what they currently had?” she wrote. “What if our John and Jane could be anyone, could be you and me? If James Bond put it all on the line out of loyalty to his country, we had to consider why some might do the same in America.”
Inspired by classic spy hits from filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman to modern reality shows like “Married At First Sight,” Sloane then teased that “stylish clothes,” “iconic, international set pieces” and “exciting shoot-em-ups” will be the “background to the raw and emotional components of John and Jane navigating the milestones of a real connection.”
“On our show, we go on the journey of seeing these two ordinary people become extraordinary,” she added. “We watch them become stronger spies but more vulnerable humans. We hope that you laugh. We hope that it makes you feel something. We hope that you enjoy the big swing.”
Starring Maya Erskine and Glover, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” premieres Feb. 2 on Amazon Prime Video.
