Author goes to lawyers on spy movie

The New Zealand author of The Secret Life of Mr and Mrs Smith will send his book to intellectual copyright law experts to determine if he has a case against the makers of the US blockbuster Mr and Mrs Smith.

In the 24-page 1997 book Mr Smith is a spy who leaves for work each day telling his wife he is working in a tax office. Mrs Smith kisses him goodbye and pretends to get on with the housework, but really she too is a spy.

In the 2005 film Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are Mr and Mrs Smith - a couple surprised to discover they are both assassins hired by competing agencies to kill each other.

The question is, did the idea for the film come from New Zealand children's author Gavin Bishop.

The Herald has obtained a copy of the book, which is essentially a literacy tool for seven and eight-year-olds.

Mr Bishop said it was the essence of the story, rather than detail, that had been used by the film's makers.

"It's a very, very simple story, a children's reading book, but the voice runs through it and runs through the movie," he said.

Herald entertainment editor Russell Baillie, who reviewed the movie last year, read the book yesterday and said there were slight similarities in that both were about married agents named Smith who kept their working lives secret from each other.

But that had been done before in movies like Prizzi's Honor and True Lies, and even Spy Kids was a variation on the same theme, he said.

"So the book's premise is hardly original, neither is calling a character Smith to show they're hiding something - the first movie entitled Mr and Mrs Smith was made in 1941 by Alfred Hitchcock.

"In the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie the Smiths are cold-blooded assassins undergoing marriage guidance counselling in between assignments for their shady amoral agencies.

"In the book, the Smiths are a pair of do-gooders - destroying weapons of mass destruction, releasing innocent prisoners while remaining happily married. It wouldn't have made much of a movie."

The company behind the movie, 20th Century Fox, has asked for a copy of the book.

Simon Kinberg, who wrote the film, said in an online interview that he got the idea while at film school.

He was a "huge action-film fan" and had a couple of friends in marriage therapy.

"And the way they were talking about it sounded kind of aggressive and mercenary," he said.

"And I just thought it would make an interesting template for a relationship inside of an action film."

Mr Bishop's book has sold widely in US schools and the author believes Mr Kinberg could have seen a copy.

But Christchurch-based Mr Bishop said that whatever happened he was "not going to let it eat me up".

The author of more than 20 children's books said the heart of the matter was money, but he was not going to let any legal row take over his life.