I went back and checked the receipts on Mr. & Mrs. Smith recently, because I had this nagging memory that it flopped. That memory is wrong. The 2005 movie made $487 million worldwide, and it was, at the time, the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career and of Angelina Jolie’s. Both of them.
Simultaneously. So how does a movie that outgrossed everything either star had ever done end up filed away in a lot of people’s heads as a flop? I pulled the numbers, the awards record, and the Season 2 production trail, and the answer is a genuinely fun 20-year data story. A flop does not get a Certified Fresh, Emmy-winning, renewed reboot 19 years later. What follows is the case.
Key Takeaways
Grossed $487 million worldwide after its June 10, 2005 release, at the time, the biggest movie either Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie had made, and it won zero major awards doing it.
The 2024 Prime Video series earned 16 Emmy nominations in 2024 (including best drama series) with two wins, and holds a 90% critics score (Certified Fresh) against a 66% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
No film sequel was ever made; the story continued via the Prime Video reimagining, which is in Season 2 production in Los Angeles with new cast members including Francesca Scorsese.
Table of Contents
Was Mr. & Mrs. Smith a hit or flop?
Yes, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a commercial hit: the 2005 film earned $487 million worldwide after its June 10, 2005 release, and that figure was the biggest box office result either Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie had ever attached their name to. Directed by Doug Liman from a Simon Kinberg script and running 120 minutes, the movie did the one thing that actually decides the hit-or-flop question: it sold tickets, a lot of them.
Here’s where the data gets interesting. The awards record reads zero. Not few, zero. No major trophies despite one of the year’s biggest grosses, and mixed-to-positive critical reception along the way, though some critics called it a near-perfect action flick.
So the movie sits in this weird quadrant: commercially enormous, awards-empty, critically mixed, culturally inescapable. And the cultural memory seems to have collapsed all of that down to flop, possibly because the tabloid noise around Pitt and Jolie drowned out the actual numbers, or because no trophies got conflated with no money. The tell in articles that push the flop memory is that they quote the tabloid era without ever quoting the gross.
The honest read, and the one I genuinely hold: it’s an underrated fun popcorn movie, and that’s fine. Quick refresher on the premise: John and Jane Smith are married assassins on rival payrolls, and both get assigned the same target. Benjamin Danz, then each other. The premise does most of the selling, the stars deliver, and audiences showed up in numbers that no awards committee can argue with.
It didn’t need to be prestige cinema to be a hit. The metric that mattered was ticket sales, and it cleared that bar easily.
How much did Mr. & Mrs. Smith make at the box office?
Mr. & Mrs. Smith made $487 million worldwide. Quick spec sheet, because concrete specs beat adjectives:
- Released: June 10, 2005
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Director: Doug Liman
- Writer: Simon Kinberg
- Cast: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, with Vince Vaughn, Kerry Washington, Adam Brody, and Keith David
What I can’t source here: the production budget, actual profit figures, or inflation-adjusted rankings against other 2005 releases. So this article sticks to the gross and the cast-of-careers framing, which honestly carry the verdict on their own.
Was it Brad Pitt’s biggest movie?
Mr. & Mrs. Smith was, at the time of its release, the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career, and simultaneously the highest-grossing film of Angelina Jolie’s. That’s the “at the time” part, and it matters: the record has moved since, and this article isn’t going to invent rankings of their later movies or retroactive comparisons it can’t source. What the record shows is the snapshot from June 2005, and it’s a strong one. The $487 million gross landed on top of both leads’ filmographies at once, which is a rare thing for any two-star movie, let alone one where the two stars were generating their own weather system off screen.
It’s worth sitting with that pairing for a second, because it’s the cleanest evidence against the flop memory. A flop doesn’t become the career-high-water mark for two of the biggest movie stars on the planet in the same summer. The movie did that while also carrying a tabloid circus, zero awards momentum, and critics who were mixed-ish at best. Strip away the noise and the box office alone tells you what audiences decided.
The precision caveat is also the trust signal here: “biggest movie” claims age badly because careers keep going. So the accurate statement is time-boxed, and I’d rather state it accurately than stretch it. At that moment in 2005, no Pitt movie and no Jolie movie had made more money. That’s the fact, it’s a genuinely wild one, and it’s the reason the film’s commercial reputation survives every awards-season snub thrown at it.
Why do people think Mr. & Mrs. Smith flopped?
Two forces, really. First, the awards-versus-audience split: reception was mixed-to-positive, some critics called it \”near-perfect,\” but it won nothing major, and a lot of people apparently read the lack of trophies as a sign of no traction. Audiences, meanwhile, bought $487 million worth of tickets. In case it’s been a minute: John and Jane Smith are married, quietly assassinating people for rival agencies, until both get assigned the same target. Benjamin Danz, and then each other.
H3: What critics said about the 2005 film
Critics were split, but not hostile, and the “near-perfect action flick” read deserves its airtime alongside the shrugs. It’s a crowd-pleaser that awards voters ignored, and that’s a perfectly fine thing to be.
H3: Where to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is it on Netflix?
It is, as part of Netflix’s October lineup, 20 years after release, and studios don’t re-license a forgotten flop. Availability rotates, so check your local catalog rather than trusting any single write-up, this one included.
Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get together filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith?
Yes. The relationship started during filming and lasted more than a decade. And the tabloid machine around it was relentless, running the story constantly, usually with Jennifer Aniston’s photo attached. That cycle is why the movie felt inescapable in 2005, and it probably helped sell tickets, but the causal chain has one more link: curiosity only converted into $487 million because the film actually delivered as entertainment. Plenty of heavily covered movies haven’t turned noise into that kind of gross.
Is the Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV series as successful as the movie?
On the measures that matter, yes: the 2024 Prime Video series was one of the platform’s best series debuts in viewership terms, all 8 episodes streamed where to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith on February 2, 2024, and it holds a 90% critics score (Certified Fresh) against a 66% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
What the 2024 series is about and how it differs from the movie
The reboot flips the premise: instead of a married couple, it’s two lonely strangers hired by a mysterious spy agency and given new identities as married John and Jane Smith. Combat-adept, marriage-inept, and there’s plenty confirmed and rumored about season 2 already.
Critics vs. audience: the 90%/66% split
Rotten Tomatoes shows 90% critics, 66% audience. The gap is real and worth noting; it doesn’t change the verdict that a flop doesn’t get a Certified Fresh, Emmy-nominated, renewed reboot.
How many Emmy nominations did Mr. & Mrs. Smith get?
Sixteen Primetime Emmy nominations in 2024, including best drama series, with two wins. Those numbers came through Deadline, Emmy coverage, and Amazon’s own recap, so they’re solid. Maya Erskine picked up a lead-actress nomination, she learned the news mid-conversation with a contractor about converting her garage into an office, and Parker Posey earned her first-ever Emmy nomination, in guest actress, alongside Michaela Coel and Sarah Paulson. The story itself first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. That’s the whole answer, and it’s a big one.
What made the reboot actually good?
Yes, Parker Posey auditioned for the 2005 movie, in 2004, and lost the part to Kerry Washington; she assumed her role got cut and only learned the real story years later, then two decades after the audition she was offered Other Jane and earned her first-ever Emmy nomination, in guest actress, nominated alongside Michaela Coel and Sarah Paulson.
The craft behind it: Maya Erskine built Jane iteratively with Francesca Sloane, with the two feeding each other’s choices as the season developed. The fight-scene line “We don’t say that” came from Erskine’s parents’ real rule about no swearing during arguments, which is exactly the kind of detail that explains why the show works. And the guest cast was a deliberate flex: Hiro Murai called Ron Perlman and John Turturro “the Avengers of character actors,” and Sloane said she and Glover cast actors they personally idolized. The roster backs it up: Alexander Skarsgård, Eiza González, Sarah Paulson, Sharon Horgan, Billy Campbell, Úrsula Corberó, Paul Dano. Spoilers ahead for the finale: Other John ends up blinded, a shootout rages through a bullet-ridden house, and Other Jane’s fate is left unknown.
Posey has pitched a returning Other Jane as a rural Jane Smith working at a hardware store, living a quiet life. That’s her charming hypothetical, not confirmed Season 2 plot. She was also filming The White Lotus Season 3 in Thailand at the same time, for a show that holds 15 Emmys.
Who plays Jane Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith Season 2?
Francesca Scorsese plays a Jane Smith in Season 2, per Deadline’s exclusive reporting, with Mark Eydelshteyn and Talia Ryder as a younger Smith pair and Scorsese believed to be part of another couple. Production started in Los Angeles roughly a month before that report, and Donald Glover is reported, via unnamed sources, to be directing multiple episodes after helming the Season 1 finale. Anna Ouyang Moench is the Season 2 showrunner, writer, and EP alongside Glover, with Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Stephen Glover, Anthony Katagas, and Fam Udeorji returning as EPs, joined by Maya Erskine.
Season 2 production status and format uncertainty
The plot’s undisclosed, nobody’s said yet whether Season 2 continues the story or goes anthology. Glover and Erskine are believed to be reprising their roles to an unclear extent, which lines up with Erskine’s own comment that there are no updates because the writers room is writing.
Who is Francesca Scorsese?
If the surname is the only thing you know: she was in the main cast of Luca Guadagnino’s 2020 HBO/Sky Atlantic limited series We Are Who We Are. Her directorial debut was a segment in the 2021 Netflix docuseries Stories of a Generation, with Pope Francis, yes, really. Since then: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (2024, Cannes), the Netflix comedy Roommates, the short Adults Only, a book with A24, plus modeling and a TikTok presence. The range is the point.
The verdict: hit means the property survived
There has never been a Mr. & Mrs. Smith movie sequel, despite the $487 million and the persistent search demand for one. The continuation arrived 19 years later as the Prime Video series, and its Season 2 format remains unclarified. So the honest calibration is this: the reboot’s 66% audience score shows the original’s appeal doesn’t transfer uniformly, but nothing in the record supports “flop.” A flop doesn’t get re-licensed to Netflix 20 years on, a Certified Fresh 90% from critics, 16 Emmy nominations, two wins, and a renewed Season 2 shooting in Los Angeles.
The flop memory is an awards illusion. The correct test for a hit is what happened next, and what happened next was more of it. If you want to catch up on where the cliffhanger leaves things, we’ve got a full rundown of Mr. & Mrs. Smith Season 2’s status, plus a look at where to watch Season 2 and what a trailer might reveal about its timing.
People Also Ask
What is Brad Pitt’s biggest hit?
At the time of its release, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career, with $487 million worldwide. The record has moved since 2005, so the accurate claim is time-boxed: no Pitt movie had made more money before that June 2005 release.
Was Mr. & Mrs. Smith a hit or flop?
A hit, unambiguously. It grossed $487 million worldwide after its June 10, 2005 release — the biggest movie either lead had made at that point — despite winning zero major awards and drawing mixed-to-positive reviews. The flop memory is an awards illusion: no trophies got conflated with no money.
Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get together filming Mr and Mrs Smith?
Yes — the relationship began during filming of the 2005 movie and lasted more than a decade. The tabloid coverage made the film feel inescapable in 2005 and likely boosted ticket sales, but the film’s $487 million gross came because it delivered as entertainment, not from noise alone.
