MIAMI VICE ’85: Law and Disorder on set of retro-reboot…

A week or so after the first publicity shots came out, there’s more news from the set of Miami Vice ’85 – though perhaps not the kind you’d want.

The project is, of course, based on the seminal cop show of the 1980s in which crime-solving took something of a back-seat to fashion and soundtrack. Don Johnson starred as Sonny Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs, two cops in a unit that tried to bring justice to the streets, harbours and coastline of Miami, Florida.  The show was groundbreaking, moving away from the grittier or more procedural police shows and giving it a style more akin to pop videos. Acclaimed director Michael Mann cut his teeth on the show which ran for five seasons on NBC from September 16, 1984, to June 28, 1989.

The show was re-imagined for the big screen in 2006 with Colin Farrell taking the Crockett role and Jamie Foxx as Tubbs. Despite it being updated to the Noughties, it was, in its own neon-hued way, just as beholden to style and speed with Mann returning to helm the feature.

The new film, currently shooting and aiming for a May 2028 release, features Austin Butler as Crockett and Michael B. Jordan as Tubbs and shifts the story back to the Eighties and the original gloss and setting. The film is being directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, Tron: Legacy, F1: The Movie) with some of the action being lensed in Miami and other scenes in Brooklyn, NY.

There’s much anticipation for the film but on the night of Friday 23rd October, a man was arrested on the set night after he took out a knife during a confrontation with a crew member on the Brooklyn set. The man – later identified as a local 23 year-old man named Alex Perez – was subsequently arrested on the set near Washington Cemetery. There were no injuries but the police confirmed that Perez was charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon. He already had prior arrests, including gang-related activities and assault with a firearm and burglary.