Audiences wanted to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith 2, but it never happened - why? Doug Liman’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith brought a twist to espionage films as well as romcoms, with a combination of action and romance that surprised critics and viewers. The film was also a box office hit and the chemistry between the lead actors was undeniable, but a sequel never materialized, for some reason. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was written by Simon Kinberg and was loosely based on the 1996 CBS show of the same name, and had Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as the titular couple.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith followed John and Jane Smith, a bored, married couple who have been keeping a big secret from each other for years: they are assassins working for competing agencies. When they’re both assigned to kill the same criminal, they learn the truth about the other - but that’s only the beginning of their problems, as they are later assigned to kill each other. Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s success was overshadowed by Pitt and Jolie’s off-screen relationship, but still, the film was very well received and the possibility of a sequel was there.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith had the potential to spawn at least one more film, and there was interest from Jolie and Pitt to continue the story. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2010, Jolie shared that they asked somebody to look into it, but there were no original ideas for it. According to her, it was all about either the characters getting married, becoming parents, or finally separating, which are not exactly the most original ideas there can be. Months before Jolie’s statements, a prequel was reportedly in development, supposedly titled Keeping up with the Joneses, and without Pitt and Jolie attached to it. In the end, neither the prequel nor an actual sequel came to be.
Just two years after the release of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a pilot for a spinoff TV series was made for ABC, written once more by Simon Kinberg and directed by Doug Liman. Jordana Brewster and Martin Henderson replaced Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but there was not enough chemistry between them, and the network decided to not commission the series. Maybe the Smiths are just not meant to be on TV, as the original series aired from September 1996 to November of that same year, and only nine out of the 13 episodes made ultimately ended up on the air.
While Mr. & Mrs. Smith could have easily continued in one or even two more films, the story is solid enough to hold itself and doesn’t really need a sequel or a spinoff of any kind. Given that there weren’t any original ideas or angles for a second film, it’s much better off as a single story than a franchise – and with everything that happened off-screen, the film will be remembered for years to come for different reasons.