Even though the movie made almost half a billion dollars at the box office, if you walked up to anyone and asked them to describe the plot of Mr. & Mrs. Smith to you in any great detail, chances are they’d be completely stumped other than the basic “married couple are hired to kill each other” logline.
And yet, Doug Liman’s light and breezy blockbuster continued to hoover up headlines for decades, based entirely on the romance that blossomed between stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie during production. If it’s not Jennifer Aniston’s name being invoked, then it’s the ongoing legal battles between the A-list leads that continue to rage to this day, all of which traces back to their tabloid-triggering initial union on Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
In case you’d forgotten (and everybody probably has), the story revolves around the bickering spouses trying to take out Adam Brody’s Benjamin Danz, with plenty of obstacles being thrown in their way by elite operatives’ respective agencies. Even the episodic reboot has mostly been in the news for its high turnover of personnel, continuing the IP’s legacy as headline fodder.
It still ranks as the second highest-grossing live-action release of Pitt’s entire career behind World War Z (his one-second Deadpool 2 cameo notwithstanding), though, while her two outings as Maleficent are the only Jolie vehicles to have earned more than Mr. & Mrs. Smith‘s $487 million from theaters.
Despite all that, it’s remembered for their offscreen dalliance above all else, even if it has taken aim at a plum spot on the Netflix charts as we head into the weekend. As per FlixPatrol, the frothy caper ranks as the streamer’s third top-viewed title among subscribers in the United States, a full 17 years after gifting the world with the A-list couple that would become its obsession.