Joseph Kosinski's crime thriller now has its heavy, with the Odyssey breakout signing on for a fourth Universal project this year alone.
John Leguizamo has a new job in Miami, and it isn't a good one for whoever's on the other side of his badge. The actor has signed on to play the primary villain in Joseph Kosinski's big-screen version of Miami Vice, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the story Wednesday. TheWrap confirmed the casting within the hour.
The film, titled Miami Vice '85, already has Michael B. Jordan as Ricardo Tubbs and Austin Butler as James Crockett, the pastel-suited detectives who made the original 1984 series a cultural moment. Alden Ehrenreich, Whitney Peak, Camila Morrone and Danny Ramirez round out the cast that's assembled so far. Leguizamo slots in as the piece's main threat, per sources cited by THR.
A script with two writers behind it
Dan Gilroy, the Nightcrawler Oscar nominee, wrote the current draft, working from characters created by Anthony Yerkovich, who executive produced the original show alongside Michael Mann. Eric Warren Singer had an earlier pass at the screenplay, TheWrap reported. The story returns to the pilot episode's setup, tracking the start of the Crockett-Tubbs partnership against the backdrop of mid-'80s Miami, its cocaine money and its fast boats.
Kosinski, fresh off Top Gun: Maverick and F1, is directing. Dylan Clark, who produced The Batman, is on board alongside Kosinski. The plan is an IMAX shoot, with production expected to start in November across New York and Miami. Universal has already dated the film for May 19, 2028.
Leguizamo's very busy year
This is where it gets interesting for Leguizamo specifically. He's had a strong run through The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's adaptation in which he played Eumaeus opposite Matt Damon's Odysseus, a film that's since become Universal's highest-grossing release ever at $1.68 billion worldwide. That performance has put him in the awards conversation this season, per TheWrap.
He isn't stopping there. Leguizamo has also landed a role in the untitled Daniels project currently shooting in Los Angeles, which reunites him with Damon, and he appears in Mike Flanagan's The Exorcist: Martyrs, due out March 12, 2027. Add Miami Vice '85 and that's four Universal titles for one actor inside a stretch of maybe eighteen months. Somebody at the studio clearly likes what he's doing.
What nobody's confirmed yet is who exactly Leguizamo is playing, what his character's relationship to the drug trade looks like, or how much screen time the villain gets against two leads who are themselves still fairly new to franchise-scale roles. THR's sources describe him only as the film's main heavy, nothing more specific.
Casting will likely keep filling out through the fall as the November start date approaches. Whether Miami Vice '85 can translate its pedigree, Kosinski behind the camera, Gilroy on the page, into something that actually recaptures what made the original show matter is the bigger question hanging over a project that, on paper, has all the right names attached.
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