True love or just courting publicity?

At Monday’s press junket for “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” publicists plan to preempt the question TV reporters most want to ask Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Are you two a real-life item?

In exchange for access to two of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars, TV interviewers -- this junket won’t include print media -- must sign waivers promising not to ask Pitt personal questions -- and face possible ejection if they do, confirmed Pitt’s spokeswoman, Cindy Guagenti. (For her part, Jolie’s management declined to return calls seeking comment.)

Call it Movie Love 101: managing celebrity romance in an era of 24-hour tabloid news.

The so-called “Brangelina” affair, contrasted with the relationship of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, offers a unique case study.

“No one would be surprised if the entire thing was managed by publicists,” said Mark Lisanti, who writes defamer.com, the entertainment industry’s must-read blog. “It would be naive not to recognize that those considerations go into everything celebrities do,” added Ken Baker, West Coast executive editor of Us Weekly.

Whether the actors are simply following a script may be beside the point in a world where commerce and romance are inextricably linked.

Pitt, who is technically still married to actress Jennifer Aniston (although divorce papers have been filed), and the twice-divorced Jolie have followed the publicity “playbook of how to do it correctly,” Lisanti said. “Minimize the scandal part and maximize the promotional aspects.”

For months, tabloid magazines have detailed their affair without any solid photographic evidence and despite a steady stream of denials and “no comments” from their publicists. Only in the last month, with the movie’s imminent release, have Pitt and Jolie come forward to deny involvement, insisting intimacy was for the camera only.

Instead of sating the public appetite for anything Brangelina, however, ads, commercials and trailers for “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” have downplayed the characters’ romantic entanglement, emphasizing their characters’ highly ballistic professional rivalry. On the poster, they stand separated by the title lettering. Attired in black tie and brandishing handguns, they are dressed to kill -- one another, as it turns out -- as they portray a married pair of super-assassins assigned to take each other out.

In other words, if moviegoers want to see the steamy side of the two stars’ relationship, they’ll have to buy tickets.

“It’s serendipitous more than it’s engineered,” insisted Sanford Panitch, president of filmed entertainment at Regency Films, which produced “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

Cruise and Holmes -- whose respective movies, “War of the Worlds” and “Batman Begins,” are also among the biggest expected blockbusters this summer -- face precisely the opposite crisis. Call them Exhibit B.

Bloggers, columnists and industry observers say that Cruise’s May appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to promote “War of the Worlds” -- and proclaim his feelings for his new paramour -- totally backfired. In the aftermath, polls in People magazine and Us Weekly indicated over 60% of respondents thought their relationship was a publicity stunt.

Mistake No. 1 was being so public about it all. The sight of the famously private Cruise leaping onto Oprah’s sofa in a fit of love-drunk pique, jogging to the green room to drag his starlet girlfriend onstage and bellowing “I love this woman!” to whomever would listen felt forced.

“His publicists should have studied what was going on with Brad and Angelina,” Lisanti said. “Imagine if Tom and Katie showed up somewhere once and then denied it. And they did that whole song and dance for the public, ‘We’re just friends,’ rather than doing staged photo-ops three weeks after they met.”

That, Lisanti said, would have generated genuine interest, or at the very least kept people from branding it a crude publicity stunt. “They’ve made every possible mistake in terms of getting people into it,” he added.

Even if they are a legitimate pair, industry observers said, Cruise and Holmes are in need of serious damage control before their movies hit screens. “It’s bad, it’s transparent and people really question if something is going on with Tom,” said branding and image consultant Morris Reid. “This is so outside the person he is.”

Publicists at Warner Bros., the studio releasing Holmes’ “Batman Begins,” have privately expressed dismay at the crazy-in-love Cruise’s antics. And just days before Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” is released, when Paramount publicists should be focused on boosting the movie’s profile, they find themselves answering the same line of questioning over and over. “This is absolutely not a publicity stunt,” said Nancy Kirkpatrick, Paramount’s executive vice president of worldwide publicity. “Tom is very happy and we are very happy for him.”

A marketing executive at 20th Century Fox, which is distributing “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” conceded that the tabloid notoriety had increased public awareness of the movie. “[But] our challenge is to make sure the people ... are focused on ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ and not just Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie,” said Pamela Levine, co-president of theatrical marketing.

That job became more difficult when paparazzi photos of Pitt and Jolie on what their publicists termed a “humanitarian mission” in Africa surfaced in April. Purchased by Us Weekly for a reported $500,000, the pictures depict the stars as a de-facto family unit as Pitt is seen playing with Jolie’s 3-year-old adopted son, Maddox. Public displays of affection, however, are notably absent.

Whether efforts to damage-control Pitt and Jolie’s co-stardom will translate into a ticket bonanza for “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” or a “Gigli”-style dud remains to be seen. But Lisanti feels the calculated way their relationship has played out provides a valuable lesson for movie marketers and publicists. “It only helps the publicity for the movie,” he said.