“The Thomas Crown Affair” Is Coming Back. Remember When Martinique Stole the Show?
Michael B. Jordan’s remake opens in March. In the 1999 film, Pierce Brosnan and Renée Russo took the action to a seaside villa on Martinique’s Atlantic coast.
The most enviable thing Thomas Crown had in the 1999 movie might have been the house in Martinique. When Pierce Brosnan’s art thief takes Renée Russo’s insurance investigator to his island hideaway, the movie trades Manhattan galleries and townhouses for a villa overlooking the Atlantic. The house was real. So was the view. And the production went to Le Vauclin, on Martinique’s southeastern coast, to get it.
Now The Thomas Crown Affair is coming back. Amazon MGM Studios released a new trailer on November 12 for the film, which opens in U.S. theaters on March 5, 2027. Michael B. Jordan directs, produces and plays Crown, with Adria Arjona starring as the investigator pursuing him. It’s the third version of the story, after the 1968 film with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway and the 1999 remake with Brosnan and Russo.
The Villa in Le Vauclin
By the time Crown and Catherine Banning get to Martinique, she already suspects him of stealing the painting she’s been hired to recover. And she goes away with him anyway. The island detour gives them time alone, away from the people watching them in New York. It also gives Banning a chance to see how Crown lives when he thinks nobody’s looking.
France’s tourism press office identifies the filming location as a villa in Le Vauclin, with the house itself documented at Pointe du Vauclin. It’s a part of the island worth knowing if most of your mental pictures of Martinique come from the sheltered coves on the other side. Here you’re on the Atlantic, on the same coast as Le François and, farther north, the Caravelle Peninsula.
Other filming locations include the town of Saint Pierre and what was then a far smaller version of Martinique’s Aime Cesaire International Airport.
A Day on Martinique’s Atlantic Coast
Start in Le Vauclin, then head north to Le François for Habitation Clément. You can spend part of the afternoon at the estate, where the aging cellars offer an introduction to Martinique’s rhum agricole. The island’s signature spirit starts with fresh sugarcane juice, and Clément’s Canne Bleue gives you a particularly grassy, fresh-tasting example.
With another day, keep going to Tartane. Buy fresh fish near the village beach, take a surf lesson at Anse Bonneville, then have a drink on the rooftop of an old rum distillery overlooking the Atlantic. French Coco, a small hotel with private-pool suites and a restaurant worth staying in for, is a good reason to spend the night.
What to See Across the Island
On the southwestern coast, Les Anses-d’Arlet has the long wooden pier that points straight toward the village church. You can swim beside it, walk a few steps to lunch and order accras and grilled fish with your feet practically in the sand. Farther north, Saint-Pierre sits beneath Mount Pelée. Its history includes a remarkable connection with the United States that goes back to the town’s days as the “Paris of the Caribbean.”
The new movie will give us another Thomas Crown and another art heist. The 1999 version already gave us a reason to look up Le Vauclin. More than a quarter-century later, it’s still a good place to start a few days on Martinique.
