FOX Grabs Alan McElroy’s Man and Wife Actioner

The Hollywood Reporter calls writer Alan McElroy’s spec script for “Man and Wife” a “high-concept action-thriller”, but after reading the plot synopsis (below), it sounds more like a rehash of the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie starrer “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” to me. Not that FOX seems to care. They’ve paid a friendly mid-six figures for the script, and has set Ralph Winter to produce it. McElroy (pictured, left), if the name doesn’t sound familiar, is the writer of another “high-concept action thriller” called “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” which, as you’ll remember, didn’t exactly set the world on fire. And oh yeah, he also wrote “The Marine” for Jon Cena. Yikes.

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The studio is keeping plot details under wraps but it is known that the story centers on a professional killer who is forced to pretend to be an ordinary husband, and the wife who learns to love her husband in a totally unexpected way.

Like I said, sounds a lot like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” — sliced in half, since it seems only the man is the assassin, and the wife doesn’t know it. Then again, it couldn’t possibly be any worst than “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever”, could it?