Joseph Kosinski is giving another iconic ’80s IP a contemporary twist. After helming “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kosinski will now be directing the “Miami Vice” reboot film, as THR reported. IndieWire has reached out to reps for Kosinski and Universal to confirm.
Kosinski, who also has “F1” at Apple, will collaborate with screenwriter Dan Gilroy (“Nightcrawler,” “The Bourne Legacy”) for the feature. Kosinski’s version will be produced by Dylan Clark (“The Batman”).
“Miami Vice” was first an NBC TV series starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two undercover Miami police officers. Michael Mann, who served as a producer on the series, later brought the concept to the big screen in 2006 with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in the Universal Pictures film.
Kosinski recently told Deadline that his Formula 1 film “F1” is technically a sibling feature to “Top Gun: Maverick” with the stunts and camera work. “It’s the next generation from what we did on ‘Top Gun,’” Kosinski said. “Everything is much smaller and the big innovation is that we’re now able to control the movement of the cameras on the cars. We’re not locked into these kinds of fixed positions we had on ‘Top Gun.’ Now we have real-time control of panning and focusing them while shooting through a very extensive RF network that we’ve built around the tracks.”
It seems like Kosinski will be swapping planes and cars for boats with “Miami Vice.” Mann’s 2006 film was also revolutionary at the time, with its mix of 35mm and digital photography. Mann told IndieWire that during the first two weeks of shooting, he had “this recurring nightmare that the film didn’t really exist” due to the lack of literal footage. “I’m out there spending all the studio’s money shooting something that is some form of conceptual art — it only exists in my imagination because there is nothing tangible,” he said.
“Miami Vice” cinematographer Dion Beebe added, “I hated the idea of dragging this digital system around the world, trying to shoot on boats with a tethered camera, and all of the stuff that we had was terrifying. […] It was challenging as hell, but also exciting when you got in the theater (to screen dailies) and saw some of the results, and started to recognize that this new aesthetic sort of emerging. […] It’s probably still the most difficult movie I’ve ever made.”
