Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith is surprisingly not as dead as it may have seemed with a new showrunner on board promising season 2 is coming after all!. This comes after news that the series was halted indefinitely.
It’s often tricky figuring out the future of streaming shows, with some series going from limited to ongoing, while shows promised a second season are cut too short. That situation surrounded Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which premiered in February 2024 and was then renewed a few months later.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith lands a new showrunner
We’ll get to the issues about the show in a moment but the news now is that, per Deadline, Anna Ouyang Moench (a writer/producer on Beef and Severance) has been chosen as the showrunner/writer/executive producer for season 2 of the series. She’ll take over from co-creator Francesca Sloane.
“Anna is a phenomenal storyteller with an incredible ability to balance character-driven drama, sharp humor, and emotional depth,” said Peter Friedlander, Global Head of Television, Amazon MGM Studios, who oversaw Beef in his previous top programming role at Netflix. “Her work on Beef and Severance speaks for itself, and we’re thrilled to have her at the helm of Mr. and Mrs. Smith Season 2 as she builds on the series’ compelling world and pushes it into exciting new territory for our global Prime Video customers.”
For those who don’t know, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is based on the 2005 Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie film of the same name. The first season starred Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as freelance spies who pose as husband and wife on various assignments. The dark comedy plays on the pair growing closer despite the danger of their jobs, building to a wild cliffhanger.
One would think that after that, season 2 would get under production quickly. Instead, the series has been beset by numerous problems, leading many to believe it would never return.
What is going on with Mr. & Mrs. Smith?
The main tripping point for season 2 was that just before pre-production was underway, Sloane left Amazon MGM Studios for an overall deal with HBO which includes writing the third season of Big Little Lies. That suspended production despite several scripts already being written.
Then, rather than pick up with the cliffhanger with Glover and Erskine, the series instead cast a new “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, played by Mark Edyelshteyn and Sophie Thatcher. Glover will remain as a producer and Edyelshteyn and Thatcher are still attached. However, it’s unclear whether the various actors announced for recurring roles (including Lily-Rose Depp, Francesca Scorsese, Levon Hawke, Wagner Moura, and Gael Garcia Bernal) will return per their schedules.
Production is expected to get back underway, and per the Deadline article, there aren’t expecting too many changes from the planned storyline, although Moench is likely to put her own creative stamp on the series. It’s expected to start filming in the spring of summer to keep to the 18-month window for a $22.4 million tax credit for relocating the series to Los Angeles.
This is still in the working stages and it’ll be a while before the new season gets underway but at least fans of Mr. & Mrs. Smith can be assured the series is returning after all!
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is available to stream on Prime Video.