Joseph Kosinski‘s new big-screen version of Miami Vice may have found the Crockett for its Tubbs. Oscar-nominee Austin Butler is in talks to star as one of half of the Floridian crime-fighting duo at the center of the reimagined 1980s TV classic. The movie is set to be released by Universal on August 6, 2027.
According to reports, Butler is still in talks for the role, as is Michael B. Jordan, whose involvement in the film was first reported yesterday. Butler and Jordan would respectively play Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, a pair of vice detectives taking on the drug trade in Miami. In contrast to the straight-laced Tubbs, Crockett is a wild card who lives on a boat, drives a Ferrari, and owns a pet alligator. Unlike series producer Michael Mann‘s 2006 big-screen version of the series, Kosinski‘s film will be a period piece, set in the 1980s milieu of the original TV series. Kosinski, fresh from the high-octane action of this summer’s F1: The Movie, will direct, while screenwriting duties will be handled by Eric Warren Singer, who wrote Kosinski‘s Top Gun: Maverick, and Nightcrawler‘s Dan Gilroy.
Who Is Austin Butler?
Born in 1991 in Anaheim, California, Butler began his acting career by appearing on a number of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel series, including Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, Hannah Montana, and Zoey 101. His big breakthrough came in 2019, as he starred as Manson Family member Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He followed that up by playing Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis; Butler‘s performance was widely praised, and earned him an Oscar nomination. He has subsequently appeared in The Bikeriders, Dune: Part Two, and the AppleTV miniseries Masters of the Air. This year, he starred as cult leader Vernon Jefferson Peak in Ari Aster‘s satirical Eddington, and as baseball player turned bartender Hank Thompson in Darren Aronofsky‘s action thriller Caught Stealing. Next, he’s set to star alongside Jeremy Allen White and Anna Sawai in the A24 thriller Enemies.
In the original Miami Vice TV series, Crockett was played by Don Johnson; the role made the unknown Johnson into a star, and earned him an Emmy in 1986. For Mann‘s big-screen remake, Crockett was played by Colin Farrell, sporting a handlebar mustache and famously declaring himself to be “a fiend for mojitos.”
Miami Vice will be released in theaters on August 6, 2027.
via Collider