Antoine Fuqua has a unique style of storytelling, excelling at his crime or action thrillers, embedding subtle dramatic essence to the core of the narratives he directs. Fuqua’s career is decorated with several astonishing titles including Denzel Washington starrer Training Day and The Equalizer franchise.
Fuqua recently revealed that he was all set to direct the movie adaptation of the 1984 Anthony Yerkovich-created NBC crime drama series Miami Vice. It would certainly meet his directorial style as he had all the intention to coalesce elements of what eventually became a Pedro Pascal show but Michael Mann helmed the project.
Antoine Fuqua Almost Made The Miami Vice Movie
It is not beyond one’s mind’s eye to at least ruminate Antoine Fuqua sitting in the director’s chair directing the Miami Vice movie adaptation. However, the acclaimed director of Heat and Manhunter, Michael Mann, took over the project. “I wanted to do ‘Miami Vice.’ I talked to Michael Mann,” Fuqua revealed in an interview with The Wrap.
“We sat and talked about that before he did that. At one point he goes, ‘You should direct it.’ I said, ‘No, Michael, that’s yours. That’s your baby.’ At that time, I was trying to do the Pablo Escobar story. I was going to bring a lot of those elements from the ’80s and ’90 into ‘Miami Vice,’ but in a more real, grounded way. I mean Michael’s great. I love Michael Mann, he’s a friend.”
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx-starrer 2006 Miami Vice would have been very different from Mann’s vision. “I was going to do it in a different way through the story of Pablo,” Fuqua said. A Pablo Escobar story created for screen by Chris Brancato; Carlo Bernard; and Doug Miro starring Wagner Moura and Pedro Pascal hit Netflix in 2015. In this regard, it is fair to assume that Pascal’s Narcos could have an explicit resemblance with Fuqua’s unmade Miami Vice.
Michael Mann Reflected on Miami Vice Failure
Directing Miami Vice was, as some would argue, the inherent right of Mann as the director was pretty much involved in the original television show. However, the movie adaptation had almost nothing to acknowledge or to identify as a Mann movie. The director admitted the biggest mistake he made with the Farrell and Foxx-starrer crime drama.
“I would’ve tried to command the same budget and not call it Miami Vice […] It doesn’t have its proper ending. Because we weren’t able to shoot those last three weeks in Ciudad del Este. We shot for three days. And so there’s a very different ending that belonged on that film,” Mann told Vulture.
The blame was not entirely upon Mann. As per earlier reports, Foxx was very unpleasant to work with which prompted Mann to change the ending of the movie. Regardless, it is fair to assume that Mann was not really happy with the final cut that hit the theaters after spending a huge $135 million only to collect $164 million at the box office.
