‘Miami Vice ’85’ Is Turning a New Jersey Strip Mall Into 1980s Miami — and Casting Real Cops as Extras

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2026 — The pastel capital of the 1980s is, for the moment, a strip mall in Wayne, New Jersey. Part of the Preakness Shopping Center on Hamburg Turnpike has spent the last week being dressed as a sun-bleached Miami streetscape — retro signs bolted over empty storefronts, box trucks unloading set decoration, planters of palm trees lined up in the parking lot — all of it in service of Universal Pictures’ “Miami Vice ’85,” the big-screen reboot of the iconic NBC crime series starring Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler, according to NorthJersey.com.

The setA slice of 1985 on Hamburg Turnpike

NorthJersey.com was on the ground in Wayne on October 1 as crews worked over the shopping center, and the details are a period-piece lover’s inventory. Workers hung retro signs over empty storefronts and unloaded box trucks filled with set decorations. Large planters containing palm trees were positioned in the parking lot — the exotic vegetation doing heavy lifting to sell the illusion that this corner of Passaic County is actually South Florida.

The revamped facades tell the rest of the story. The dressed set includes a camera shop, a men’s and boys’ clothing store, and a VCR and TV repair shop advertising a seven-digit phone number — the kind of granular, lived-in detail that separates a real location build from a green-screen approximation. It is, by every visible measure, a full-commitment transformation: not a façade or two, but a whole stretch of 1980s Miami commerce reconstructed in North Jersey.

The casting callReal cops wanted

If the set is pure 1985, the casting call is pure authenticity play. Grant Wilfley Casting is seeking nonunion Latino and White men in their 20s through 50s who have actually worked in law enforcement to appear as background actors, according to a casting notice posted on Casting Networks and detailed by NorthJersey.com. Applicants are being asked to provide details about their professional experience, including how many years they spent in the field — this is not a call for actors to play cops, but for cops to be themselves on camera.

The project is being cast under the working title “Freefall,” not the film’s actual title. NorthJersey.com independently confirmed through public records that the Wayne production is, in fact, “Miami Vice ’85.” Tentative shooting dates for the extras include October 15, 16, 26 and 30, as well as November 2 through 5, though performers will not necessarily be needed on every date. A wardrobe fitting is expected to take place in Brooklyn, and the extras call says filming will take place in New York City.

The movieKosinski’s pastel-noir reboot

The film is a reboot of the pilot episode and first season of the TV crime drama that aired for five seasons on NBC in the late 1980s, per NorthJersey.com — and the creative team suggests Universal is treating it as a marquee event. Joseph Kosinski, the filmmaker behind Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and “F1,” is directing from a script by Dan Gilroy, Blex Media notes, with the story diving into the glamour and corruption of mid-1980s Miami in a new version of the property inspired by the pilot episode of the original 1984 NBC series.

The ensemble keeps growing. Blex Media confirms that Edi Gathegi — fresh off his scene-stealing turn as Mr. Terrific in “Superman” — and comedian Andrew Schulz have joined a call sheet that already includes Jordan, Butler, Alden Ehrenreich, Whitney Peak, Camila Morrone and Danny Ramirez. Empire adds that John Leguizamo has joined as the film’s main villain, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and that the production is being filmed for IMAX.

The call sheet may still be growing. FilmStories notes that Walton Goggins has also joined the starry cast — and that the film is said to be a big-screen reworking of “Brother’s Keeper,” the feature-length pilot episode that introduced television audiences to the Crockett-and-Tubbs partnership back in 1984. In that pilot, a New York detective travels to Miami to hunt a drug dealer and ends up partnered with a local vice cop — the odd-couple pairing that powered the original series through five seasons on NBC.

It is the first screen take on the franchise since Michael Mann’s 2006 film, Empire notes, and Universal has staked out May 19, 2028 for the theatrical release — a prime early-summer corridor that signals exactly how big the studio thinks this crime thriller can play. Production is expected to begin this November across New York and Miami, per both Blex Media and Empire, which makes the New Jersey location work now underway look like the production getting its 1985 Miami streets ready before the cameras officially roll.

What’s nextWhen the cameras roll

For now, the dates remain tentative and Universal has made no formal production announcement — the Wayne set and the “Freefall” casting notice are the clearest public signals of where things stand. But the shape of the shoot is coming into focus: a fall of location work in the New York area, a November production start spanning New York and Miami, and a finished film aimed at the summer box office of 2028. If the Preakness Shopping Center is any indication, Kosinski’s Miami will be built the old-fashioned way — one seven-digit phone number at a time.