Donald Glover brings 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' back on the screen

By Hanna Rantala

LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - The married couple of assassins from the hit movie "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" returns to action in a new TV reboot of the 2005 film.

Co-created by actor and musician Donald Glover and writer Francesca Sloane, the eight-episode series is a reimagining of the characters played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie nearly two decades ago.

"The last bits of it are a lot like the movie but it's pretty different actually," said Glover as he premiered the show in London on Wednesday.

"They're differently set up. We have a lot more time to do things, too," he said.

Also titled "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", the series sees two outsiders (Glover and actress Maya Erskine) partake in a peculiar selection process to land jobs at an international spy agency and get paired up in a cover marriage. Now named John and Jane Smith, the couple must convince their new superiors of their spy skills, while adapting to sharing their daily lives with a stranger.

"I guess I just wanted to make a show about relationships because I think I've entered into a time in my life where it's like, oh, more relationship talk, so it was fun to do that," said Glover, 40, who releases music under the name Childish Gambino.

Ahead of the series debut, showrunner Sloane penned an open letter to "internet trolls" who questioned the need for the remake.

"I wanted to be very realistic about the fact that we understood where they were coming from," she said.

"There are 10 billion remakes out there, but we really tried to make something different."

As the Smiths tackle missions in glamorous destinations including Lake Como and the Dolomites, they start developing feelings for one another and find that relationships and marriage sometimes take more effort than their undercover activities.

The show's writing team drew inspiration from 70s movies and modern-day reality TV, said Sloane.

"Reality shows about love and marriage really spoke to us. We feel like lonely people are everywhere and we really wanted to speak to those lonely people," she said.

"At the end of the day, it's really a show about love. It really is a love story."

"Mr. & Mrs. Smith starts streaming on Prime Video on Feb. 2. (Reporting by Hanna Rantala Editing by Bill Berkrot)