--- description: The Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard thriller "Allied" is part of a history of movies whose onscreen chemistry is tied up in offscreen rumors. title: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard and the Long History of the Rumor Mill at the Box Office image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdfcfd68811922af0/6988af41fb4eac47a288ff9d/marion-cotillard-brad-pitt.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard and the Long History of the Rumor Mill at the Box Office  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Nov 22, 2016 9:53 PM CUT  Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt arrive at a fan event for "Allied" on November 9, 2016 in Westwood, California. Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt arrive at a fan event for "Allied" on November 9, 2016 in Westwood, California.Steve Granitz—WireImage/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Nov 22, 2016 9:53 PM CUT On Sept. 20, Brad Pitt made headlines for two reasons. Early in the day, a trailer dropped for [_Allied_](http://time.com/4518721/allied-trailer-brad-pitt-marion-cotillard/ "undefined"), the romantic World War II thriller in which he stars opposite [Marion Cotillard](http://time.com/4143638/marion-cotillard-macbeth/ "undefined"). But earlier still, news hit that his wife, Angelina Jolie, had [filed for divorce](http://time.com/4505928/brad-pitt-angelina-jolie-divorce/ "undefined") after two years of marriage and a decade of [partnership](http://time.com/4501216/angelina-jolie-brad-pitt-love-story/ "undefined"). Among the rumors bandied about by mysterious sources was that Pitt and Cotillard had cozied up on set (which was quickly and [vehemently denied](http://time.com/4506445/guillaume-canet-marion-cotillard-brad-pitt-cheating-rumors/ "undefined")), leading skeptics to wonder about the timing: unfortunate coincidence or masterful movie marketing? Even before news of the [divorce](http://time.com/4501208/angelina-jolie-brad-pitt-divorce-couple/ "undefined") broke, many had observed the apparent similarities between _Allied_, which hits theaters Nov. 23, and _Mr. and Mrs. Smith_, the 2005 romantic thriller on the set of which Jolie and Pitt famously fell in love. Both movies are about spouses who also happen to be spies and consequently can’t trust one another, leading to the breathless cat-and-mouse games that serve up the films’ dramatic tension. The stakes are lower in _Allied_, not in terms of the action (being married to an alleged Nazi spy is a perilous predicament for a Canadian intelligence officer), but in the lower volume of the rumor mill, where offscreen drama stands to up the ante onscreen. The Pitt-Cotillard rumors were but a footnote in a breakup story with far more damning [accusations](http://time.com/4503942/brad-pitt-child-abuse-allegations/ "undefined"). The scandalous (though they claimed chaste) dawning of Brangelina, while Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston, forged the most infamous love triangle since Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor—and a built-in marketing campaign for the kind of irrepressible passion viewers could expect to see in _Mr. and Mrs. Smith_. That movie would go on to make $183 million domestically and nearly $300 million worldwide. The power of an offscreen romance, real or rumored, to influence box-office success has a long history that spans the rise of tabloids, the paparazzi and, more recently, social media’s heightening of celebrity gossip to an omnipresent facet of online life. Whether real-life chemistry translates to movie chemistry and whether it gets butts in plush seats are two separate questions whose answers sometimes correlate and sometimes don’t. Seven decades after real-life couples like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made movies like _To Have and Have Not_ and _Woman of the Year_, it’s far easier to recall their electric attraction than it is to conjure box-office figures. Both of their partnerships began on movie sets, with a secrecy necessitated by infidelity, and both went on to make several movies together (Bogart/Bacall made four, Hepburn/Tracy made nine). Some fared better than others—even a spark based in real love can’t always compensate for a uninspired script or a confused plot. Other on- and offscreen couples are inscribed in the book of cinema more for their box-office triumphs than for the critical acclaim of the films they made together. In the cold, early months of 2008, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson began filming the first of five _Twilight_ movies that would make them the highest-grossing couple in movie history, with $1.36 billion to the franchise’s name despite a combined Rotten Tomatoes score that barely clears 100\. (They occupy the top three spots on a [list](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?view=main&id=offscreencouples.htm&p=.htm "undefined") of box office grosses by movies starring real-life couples. _Mr. and Mrs. Smith_ takes the fourth spot). That winter in Oregon, they also began to fall in love. And though their chemistry is apparent in the movies, Stewart and Pattinson’s off-screen life together was also rabidly scrutinized—when news broke that Stewart had cheated on Pattinson with _Snow White and the Huntsman_ director Rupert Sanders, fans took the news [personally](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V%5FQrt1k8qHo "undefined"). Unlike with other franchises, which sometimes see a drop in interest with each release, _Twilight_ saw increasing returns for the first three, and even the final installment, released post-scandal, made $100 million more than the first. But the legacy of classic Hollywood pairings and the cash cow that was Stewart and Pattinson’s vampire romance comprise relatively rare instances of success when compared to the endless flops which made—and were made by—couples. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in _Days of Thunder_. Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger in _The Marrying Man_. Demi Moore and Bruce Willis in _Mortal Thoughts_. Madonna and Sean Penn in _Shanghai Surprise_. Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid in _Flesh and Bone_. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in _Gigli_. And while the twice-married, twice-divorced Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had some fruitful outings together, they made enough bombs to average out with a middling score. Even Jolie and Pitt, who saw such great returns from their first collaboration, couldn’t revive the magic when they returned to the screen together in the Jolie-directed 2015 drama _By the Sea_. The movie told the bleak tale of a dissolving marriage, and might have claimed a similar onscreen/offscreen parallel to the one that drew audiences to _Mr. and Mrs. Smith_: could we perhaps be bearing witness to the end of something, just as we had witnessed its beginning? But the movie ended up drawing just over half a million dollars at the box office. Attribute its failure to a lack of guns or an eminently depressing trailer, but it all added up to what felt like a loss of cultural cachet. _Allied_, which comes from director Robert Zemeckis, known for straight-ahead crowd-pleasers like _Back to the Future_ and _Forrest Gump_, is the kind of old-fashioned Hollywood spectacle that might have topped box-office charts in the ‘90s. But over the Thanksgiving holiday, up against a new [Disney princess](http://time.com/4473277/moana-disney-princess-directors-interview/ "undefined") and a recently unveiled menagerie of [fantastic beasts](http://time.com/4578023/fantastic-beasts-box-office-harry-potter/ "undefined"), it’s [tracking](http://variety.com/2016/film/box-office/thanksgiving-box-office-2016-moana-bad-santa-allied-1201923700/ "undefined") at $20 million for the long weekend, on a budget of $80 million. A failure to draw bigger crowds may stem from a combination of its dated formula and Pitt’s wounded public image post-divorce. And perhaps the rumor mill isn’t what it used to be. A decade removed from The Smiths’ unbridled passion, there’s more than enough relationship drama to go around on the Kardashians’ Instagram feeds. Movies are going to have to sell themselves—juicy rumor or not. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4578748/allied-brad-pitt-marion-cotillard-rumors-box-office/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4578748/allied-brad-pitt-marion-cotillard-rumors-box-office/"},"headline":"Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard and the Long History of the Rumor Mill at the Box Office","datePublished":"2016-11-22T21:53:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T01:56:37.140Z","description":"The new romantic thriller \"Allied\" is part of a tradition of onscreen chemistry fueled by offscreen rumors","url":"https://time.com/4578748/allied-brad-pitt-marion-cotillard-rumors-box-office/","keywords":["movies","Box-office","Angelina Jolie","Brad Pitt","Marion Cotillard"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdfcfd68811922af0/6988af41fb4eac47a288ff9d/marion-cotillard-brad-pitt.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdfcfd68811922af0/6988af41fb4eac47a288ff9d/marion-cotillard-brad-pitt.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt arrive at a fan event for \"Allied\" on November 9, 2016 in Westwood, California.","caption":"Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt arrive at a fan event for \"Allied\" on November 9, 2016 in Westwood, California.","creditText":"Steve Granitz—WireImage/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4578748/allied-brad-pitt-marion-cotillard-rumors-box-office/","name":"Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard and the Long History of the Rumor Mill at the Box Office"}}]}] ```