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Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sue on my behalf
Gavin Bishop, a New Zealand author, wants to sue the makers of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, alleging that they stole the idea for the movie from his children’s book, 1997’s “The Secret Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” In his book, the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie characters are not assassins, as they are in the flick, but are married spies who do not know about each other’s extra-curricular activities. In the author’s mind, the two works are “too close to be accidental.” Of course, the author fails to mention the very similar-albeit-shortlived “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” television show, which predates his own book by a year and is also about married spies (although they are only posing as a married couple). What Bishop does mention, however, is that he can’t afford to file a lawsuit on his own, but that he would welcome a lawyer taking the case up for him.
Interestingly, Bishop’s prequel to his “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” book, 1994’s “Six Friends who Drink Coffee Together” ended with the Mr. Smith character dumping one of the six friends to be with Mrs. Smith. No word yet on whether Bishop would like to make this part of his lawsuit.
