Michael Mann has great plans for his sequel to the 1995 movie Heat. He already wrote a novel called Heat 2, which is both a prequel and a sequel, and he’s all set to adapt that into a major feature film.
Mann presented an update on his Heat 2 movie plans to Empire, “It’s totally planned to be a movie. Is it a modest movie? No. Is it a very expensive series? No. It’s going to be one large movie.” When the movie does happen, Mann confirms that Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer wouldn’t be able to reprise their roles, “I love those guys, but they’d have to be six years younger than they were in Heat.” But, Mann is confident that his movie would be a hit and explains:
“It’s sustained in culture. It’s known. I could delude myself into thinking that the whole world is familiar with it, but when you check out its prominence in home vid for over 20 years, this thing really has legs. People are still watching it, people are still talking about it. It’s a brand. It’s kind of a Heat universe, in a way. And that certainly justifies a very large ambitious movie.”
As for the book, it’s coming out in August, and when talking about that, Mann said: “The ability to which you can deep-dive into the internal world is fascinating, and you can do that best in a novel. I try to evoke that experience in the films I make, to locate the audience within the internal world of a character. The novel form allows me an even greater arena.”
The book was written by Mann and Meg Gardiner. It will tell the story of what led up to the events in the film, the new film is set in 1989, and what happened after, which is set in 2002. It covers “the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and elite criminals Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), and Nate (Jon Voight), and features the same extraordinary ambition, scope, rich characterizations, and attention to detail as the epic film.”
This new story of the movie “leads up to the events of the film and then moves beyond it, featuring new characters on both sides of the law, new high-line heists, and breathtakingly cinematic action sequences. Ranging from the streets of L.A. to the inner sancta of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in Paraguay to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, HEAT 2 illuminates the dangerous workings of international crime organizations and the agents who pursue them as it provides a full-blooded portrait of the men and women who inhabit both worlds. Operatic in scope, HEAT 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic—a masterpiece of crime fiction from one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in American cinema.”
