Miami Vice Is Back. Hollywood Has Rediscovered 1985 Again

Hollywood has decided that 1985 was a very good year.

Specifically, a very good year for fast cars, expensive sunglasses, linen suits, speedboats, synthesizers and two detectives who look like they’ve just stepped out of a nightclub at 4am.

Miami Vice ’85 is now filming, with Michael B. Jordan as Ricardo Tubbs and Austin Butler as Sonny Crockett, under the direction of Joseph Kosinski. The official line is that the film will explore the “glamour and corruption” of mid-1980s Miami and draw heavily on the pilot and first season of the original series. In other words, nobody is pretending this is Miami Vice dragged into the present day. They are going straight back to the source.

And that may be exactly the right decision.

The original Miami Vice was never just a cop show. It was atmosphere. Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas drove Ferraris, wore pastel suits, cruised past palm trees and investigated drug dealers while pop songs did half the emotional work. It looked unlike anything else on television and, crucially, made Miami itself feel like a character. You didn’t simply watch Crockett and Tubbs solve crimes. You wanted to live inside the colour palette.

Michael Mann’s 2006 film went in almost the opposite direction.

With Colin Farrell as Crockett and Jamie Foxx as Tubbs, Mann stripped away much of the playful 1980s iconography and made something darker, grittier and far more serious. Gone were the flamingos and pastel fantasy. In came digital night photography, drug trafficking, murky skies, dangerous undercover work and men speaking quietly about logistics while standing next to extremely expensive boats. Foxx himself made the distinction clear at the time: this was not about nostalgia, but about two cops disappearing deeper into a criminal world.

The reaction was mixed. The film cost around $135 million and made roughly $164 million worldwide, which was hardly the franchise-launching result Universal might have hoped for. Critics were divided too. But something interesting happened afterwards: Mann’s Miami Vice gained a serious cult following. What once seemed cold and odd now looks incredibly distinctive, particularly its use of early digital cinematography to capture Miami at night in a way few blockbusters had attempted before.

All this leaves Kosinski with a fascinating choice. Does he remake the TV series, remake Mann’s film, or ignore both and invent something else?

Everything we know so far suggests he is leaning toward the first option. Kosinski has said the period setting is “full on”, and the official premise explicitly embraces 1985 rather than updating Crockett and Tubbs for 2026. That makes sense when you look at his recent work. Top Gun: Maverick succeeded because it understood exactly what audiences loved about Top Gun without simply photocopying it, while F1 proved he knows how to make speed, machinery and beautiful people staring intensely into the middle distance look extremely expensive.

Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler also feel almost suspiciously well cast. Jordan can bring the intelligence and authority Tubbs needs, while Butler has spent several films proving he can somehow look cool while doing almost nothing at all. Put them beside a Ferrari at sunset, add Phil Collins or something equally inappropriate and half the job is already done.

The smartest version of Miami Vice ’85 probably sits somewhere between the two previous incarnations: the style and cultural confidence of the original series, with the danger and seriousness Mann brought to the 2006 movie.

Because Miami Vice was always ridiculous and cool at the same time. That was the point. And if Joseph Kosinski understands that, 1985 might look very good in IMAX.