Director Michael Mann confirms that he has plans to turn his Heat 2 novel into a movie. Released in 1995, Heat chronicles the dangerous game of cat and mouse played between lawman Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Nero). The crime epic was a hit with audiences and critics and has since retained a prominent place in popular culture, due especially to the memorable performances from the film’s two leads. Heat‘s thrilling heist sequences have also since inspired films like Den of Thieves and even The Dark Knight.
Officially announced earlier this year, Mann, who is also known for his directorial work on films like Collateral and Miami Vice, is set to release a novelized sequel to Heat, simply titled Heat 2. The book acts as both a sequel and a prequel to the 1995 original, chronicling the exploits of Hanna and Chris Shiherlis, who was played in the film by Top Gun: Maverick star Val Kilmer. At the end of Heat, Chris, the sole survivor of McCauley’s band of bank robbers, is left wounded and wanted by police, leaving the door open for further adventures. The Heat 2 novel, which is co-written by Meg Gardiner, is expected to release on August 18th.
In a new interview with Empire ahead of the release of the novel, Mann reveals that he plans to turn Heat 2 into a feature film. Mann admits that the project is quite ambitious, both in terms of scale and budget, but feels confident it will eventually come to fruition. This is largely because of the incredible staying power the original Heat has had in popular culture. Check out Mann’s full comments on Heat 2 below:
“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 … 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.”
In today’s entertainment landscape, Heat 2 does sound like a project that would feel at home as a gritty drama miniseries on HBO. However, Mann seems committed to a feature-length, theatrical experience. While Pacino and Kilmer would now both be too old to star in the film considering the story is partly a prequel, the former has already championed Dune star Timothée Chalamet to play a young Vincent Hanna. If Chalamet were to play a younger version of the detective, it’s still unknown who would play the younger version of Chris, Kilmer’s character.
Despite Heat’s staying power, a sequel to the film could potentially be a risky proposition, especially without stars like De Niro, Pacino, and Kilmer. With Mann already admitting that the project would be expensive and large in scale, it remains to be seen if a major studio will back the film. If Heat 2 performs well as a novel, however, it might signify in clear monetary terms that a sequel could also perform well at the box office. For now, however, fans of the original movie can look forward to the novel and the continued adventures of Vincent and Chris directly from Mann’s mind.
