February 8, 2010
New York Magazine's
Vulture* is reporting that the 2005 20th Century Fox action-comedy
Mr. & Mrs. Smith that brought together Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (in many more ways than one) is being given the reboot treatment by Regency, one of the development arms of Fox, with Akiva Goldsman attached to produce.
The original movie showed what happened when a married couple, both working
undercover without the other one's knowledge, end up on the opposite side of the world of espionage having been hired by competing agencies to kill the other. According to the story, the new movie would involve a pair of 20-something secret agents who are set up in a fake arranged marriage as covers after graduating the academy. Although it's thought that these would be different characters and not exactly a prequel to the earlier film, it would allow Fox to continue it as a franchise without paying the hefty sum Pitt and Jolie would want for a sequel. As mentioned in the article, this tactic is similar to the mindset that created the comedy prequel
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd a number of years back.
(*Thanks to Cinema Blend for bringing this story to our attention. They offer one of the craziest casting ideas for this pseudo-prequel in
their own take on the story.)
MovieMiguel.com