Prime Video’s ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ has launched its first trailer.
The show stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine.
The series launches on February 2nd.
Once upon a time, ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith‘ were Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, playing married assassins whose relationship had begun to feel stale. But when they discover their shared, hidden sides, things spice back up –– even if neither might survive it.
In taking that idea, ‘Atlanta’ creator and co-star Donald Glover has given it a slight twist (see below), recruiting Maya Erskine to play Mrs. Smith to his Mr.
From the looks of the first teaser, the show certainly manages to bring both the funny and the action levels, so this is one we’re anticipating.
19793
What’s the story of ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’?
(L to R) Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.
While it has a similar basic concept to the 2005 Doug Liman movie (famously the project where Pitt met and ended up married to co-star Jolie), the new series puts a fresh spin on the story.
Here, Glover and Erskine play two lonely strangers who land jobs working for a mysterious spy agency that offers them a glorious life of espionage, wealth, world travel, and a dream brownstone in Manhattan.
The catch? New identities in an arranged marriage as Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high-risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. Their complex cover story becomes even more complicated when they catch real feelings for each other. What’s riskier: espionage or marriage?
Who also appears in ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’?
Maya Erskine in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.
Donald Glover in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.
Glover co-created the series with Francesca Sloane, one of his ‘Atlanta’ colleagues. Christian Sprenger, a fallow ‘Atlanta’ veteran, is the main director.
Originally, ‘Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge was aboard to co-write and co-star, but because of creative differences, she left the show in 2021.
“I worked on that show for six months fully in heart and mind and really cared about it — still care about it. And I know it’s gonna be brilliant. But sometimes it’s about knowing when to leave the party. You don’t want to get in the way of a vision. Creative collaboration is like a marriage, and some marriages don’t work out.”
When will ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ be on our screens?
All eight episodes of the show will debut on Prime Video on February 2nd.
(L to R) Maya Erskine and Donald Glover in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.(L to R) Maya Erskine and Donald Glover in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.(L to R) Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ Credit: David Lee/Prime Video. Copyright: Amazon Studios.
Paul Dano at London Special Screening of ‘The Batman.’
There is new intelligence to be found about ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’, the TV adaptation of Doug Liman’s spy caper thriller that has Donald Glover co-starring and co-creating.
Originally released in 2005 and written by Simon Kinberg, the movie of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as John and Jane Smith, a married couple whose relationship has succumbed to ennui. They’re a little surprised, then, to learn that they’re both assassins and that they’ve just been hired by competing agencies to take each other out – and not in a date night sense of the word.
Exact story details of the TV version – which will show up on Prime Video – are still being kept largely confidential, though it sounds like the series will follow the characters from a younger age to their movie counterparts, tracking as they’re hired by a spy agency and figuring out both married life and espionage.
Maya Erskine, one of the creators and stars of Hulu’s ‘Pen15’ is co-starring as Jane Smith, but the character assignments for the new recruits have yet to be revealed.
John Turturro at New York premiere of ‘The Batman.’ Photo Credit: Dave Allocca/Starpix.
Turturro needs little introduction, having carved a successful career as a character for years, appearing in a wide swathe of movies and directing some. Though he’s primarily been known for his big screen work, he’s recently been receiving praise for his performance on the Apple TV+ series ‘Severance’.
Dano, meanwhile, was most recently seen playing the Riddler in ‘The Batman’, facing off against Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader (the film also featured Turturro, though they didn’t share a scene). He’ll next show up in Steven Spielberg’s much-anticipated, semi-autobiographical drama ‘The Fabelmans’, playing a character loosely based on the director’s father.
Coel, who is a rising star, might be best known for creating and starring in the limited series ‘I May Destroy You’. She pulled double duty on TV series ‘Chewing Gum’. Movie-wise, she has a role in Marvel’s upcoming ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’, in theaters on November 11th.
Though it originally intended to reunite Glover with his ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and she jumped aboard to co-write with him, creative differences led to an amicable split and Waller-Bridge departing the series.
Francesca Sloane is aboard to run the show, having worked on the scripts with Glover, but there’s no word on who might be directing it just yet. And given that ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ is still in pre-production, Amazon is yet to assign it a premiere date.
(L to R) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2005’s ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith.’
19793
Someone apparently decided that today was TV casting news day!
Still, there is a lot of TV casting to report, so let’s kick off with Loki’s return to the small screen. Well, actually, it’s Tom Hiddleston, who is now attached to his second Apple TV+ series following upcoming drama ‘The Essex Serpent’.
‘The White Darkness’ comes from another Apple veteran, ‘Pachinko’ creator Soo Hugh, who will run the show alongside ‘Strange Angel’s Mark Heyman.
The series is inspired by the true-life account of Henry Worsley, played by Hiddleston, a devoted husband and father, a former soldier, a man of deep honor and sacrifice, but also a man deeply obsessed with adventure, manifesting in an epic journey crossing Antarctica on foot.
Deadline’s report offers no details on when the show will start shooting, but there’s a fair chance that it’ll have to wait until after the next season of ‘Loki’ is filmed.
(L to R) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2005’s ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith.’
Next up, there’s a development on the TV version of movie spy thriller ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’, which had been moving ahead with Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, at least until the latter left over creative differences.
Now, though the actress and writer has been replaced by someone who similarly broke big by writing and starring in a show: ‘Pen15’s Maya Erskine will star opposite Glover in the story of married agents whose marriage is strained because they’re both so busy. That gets even more complicated when they discover that they’ve been contracted to eliminate each other.
Continuing with streaming services owned by Amazon, Neil Gaiman’s adaptation of his 2005 novel ‘Anansi Boys’ is adding a wealth of cast led by Whoopi Goldberg.
The Oscar winner, who has recently been seen reprising one of her iconic small screen characters, Guinan, on ‘Star Trek: Picard’, has signed on to play the villainous Bird Woman in the fantasy series.
‘Anansi Boys’ is the story of Charlie Nancy (Malachi Kirby) — sometimes known as Fat Charlie (it was his father’s nickname for him; he’s not fat) — a young man who is used to being embarrassed by his estranged father (Delroy Lindo). But when his father dies, Charlie discovers that he was Anansi: Trickster God of stories. And he learns that he has a brother. Now that brother, Spider (also played by Kirby), is entering Charlie’s life, determined to make it more interesting — but making it a lot more dangerous instead.
Goldberg’s Bird Woman is, as her name might suggest, the God of Birds. Bird Woman is the God of Birds and a key antagonist in the series. Anyone who’s had a close encounter with a seagull knows that some birds are more dangerous than others, and Bird Woman is the most dangerous of them all. Long ago Anansi did her wrong. Now may be her chance to turn the tables.
“I have been a fan of this book for a very long time and when Neil Gaiman told me it was being brought to the screen, I did everything I could to be part of it to help make people aware of Anansi and all his magic,” Goldberg says in a statement.
According to Gaiman, it was a fortuitous meeting that led to Goldberg’s casting. “When I first conceived ‘Anansi Boys,’ decades ago, I imagined Whoopi Goldberg as Bird Woman,” Gaiman said. “I wasn’t able to meet her until 2018, when she interviewed me with some of the ‘Good Omens’ team at New York Comic Con. At which point she mentioned that she had just finished listening to Sir Lenny Henry’s reading of ‘Anansi Boys,’ and that it was one of her favorite books. Sometimes things feel planned and inevitable, and we are incredibly lucky. She’s going to be scary.”
And she’s not the only mythic creature the Nancy family will have to worry about. Alongside Goldberg, the cast now includes Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Tiger, Emmanuel Ighodaro as Lion, Cecilia Noble playing Elephant, Ayanna Witter-Johnson as Snake and Don Gilet playing Monkey.
The various animal deities all have their own reasons for disliking Anansi – they mostly hate him for his trickster behavior, though Monkey is terrified of him.
Gaiman and co-showrunner Douglas MacKinnon (who worked alongside him on ‘Good Omens’ and its sequel series) are busy making the show in Scotland now.
Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout,’ from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
On to Netflix next, where the casting is movie related, but we’re keeping it here since it’ll debut on the streaming service. And it’s another fantasy title, this time with Angela Bassettjoining ‘Damsel’.
The movie will star Netflix stalwart Millie Bobby Brown, who plays a princess is shocked to discover that she’ll be sacrificed to the kingdom’s sacred cave dragon, after being married to her prince charming. She must survive long enough until someone comes to save her – only no one is coming.
Bassett will play Lady Bayford, the stepmother to Brown’s Elodie, while Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is directing from a script by Dan Mazeau.
Newton ended up in Cuba and his story was told in a Playboy article by Joshuah Bearman. Now ‘Claws’ showrunner Janine Sherman Barrois is working on a six-part limited series adaptation called ‘The Big Cigar’, which has Don Cheadle amongst its producers (and serving as director for the first two episodes).
In this case, Britain’s Talisa Garcia has been cast in ‘Willow’ as a queen, the mother to Tony Revolori’s character.
The ‘Willow’ series, which is set in the same universe as the 1988 fantasy movie, follows a princess who assembles a party to join her on a quest to rescue her twin brother. Warwick Davis is reprising his role as the title character.
And before you think this is Disney looking to generate some positive press in the wake of the “Don’t Say Gay” controversy over Florida politics, Garcia’s casting happened months ago, and the show is now in post-production for a planned launch this year.
