Background and development In July 2000,
Summit Entertainment had purchased screenwriter
Simon Kinberg's spec script
Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Weed Road Pictures slated to produce. Kinberg had written and sold the screenplay while working as a grad student for
Columbia University's film program. He named
True Lies and
The Thin Man series as among the inspirations. Kinberg phrased the romantic drama in metaphorical terms by making the characters "mythical" action film archetypes whose marital spats play out on a grandiose scale, and acknowledged that the tone was difficult for a film to pull off, since if taken literally, some of the characters' actions (such as John slamming Jane into a mirror during the restaurant scene) would constitute spousal abuse. This led to Pitt dropping from the film.
Aishwarya Rai was then approached to play Jane Smith but she refused as she was uncomfortable with on-screen kissing. Liman then considered
Will Smith and
Catherine Zeta-Jones as the leads. Liman also considered the pairing of
Johnny Depp and
Cate Blanchett.
Gwen Stefani also auditioned for Jane Smith. Once
Angelina Jolie was signed, Pitt was back in and the pair was set.
John Leguizamo was offered the role of Eddie, but he turned it down as he was going to get paid on scale, a decision he later regretted.
Parker Posey auditioned for the role of Jasmine, which eventually went to Kerry Washington.
Filming The scenes in the marriage counselor's office were all shot on the first day of filming, which the filmmakers thought worked exceptionally well because the usual awkwardness of the first day of filming, in conjunction with Pitt and Jolie's awkwardness at working together for the first time, came across as authentic discomfort between their characters. The producers wanted to have the
Bogotá scenes filmed in
Guanajuato, Mexico, but due to budget limitations they decided to settle for shooting it in
downtown Los Angeles. The dinner scene in which John and Jane Smith see each other with the knowledge that they are both assassins for the first time was described by both Kinberg and Liman as the scene which best encapsulated what they were trying to accomplish with the film. The scene was shot with John spitting out the meat into a napkin, but afterwards Liman was suddenly inspired to reshoot with John swallowing the meat, a decision Kinberg agreed with. In the subsequent chase scene, John was scripted to run into the picket fence, which was rigged to break on impact, but during the take that was ultimately used Pitt accidentally slipped and fell onto the fence instead. John Smith's escape from the elevator was described as on-screen in the script, and was extensively worked out, but ultimately not filmed due to budget limitations. The script called for Jane Smith to seduce Benjamin "The Tank" Danz in order to get the information the Smiths wanted, causing a bitter argument between John and Jane, but Jolie objected to doing this scene, perceiving it as a female spy stereotype. Liman said he thought Kinberg's script for the scene was terrific, but ultimately agreed to having it rewritten so Jane would bludgeon Danz instead in order to appease Jolie's concerns. Liman decided to take a lesson from how most of the scenes he shot with the villains of
The Bourne Identity ended up being cut from the film, and keep the villain screentime to a minimum with
Mr. & Mrs. Smith. However, roughly two-thirds of the way through filming the producers reviewed the footage and concluded that there was no need for the film to have villains at all, since they only distracted from the central romantic conflict between the Smiths, and cut all the scenes in which the villains appeared. Liman also felt that having villains who the Smiths defeat sent the wrong message, implying that the Smiths' problems are completely resolved, and preferred the film to end with the message that marriage is an ongoing struggle. ==Music==