Heat 2: Michael Mann Teases Filming on Highly-Anticipated Sequel

Mann says he plans to shoot the film next year, but remains quiet on casting questions.

By Russ Burlingame

In a recent interview, Heat and Ferrari filmmaker Michael Mann revealed that he is pretty far into the process of writing a screenplay for Heat 2, a sequel to his 1995 crime classic. The book Heat 2, co-written with Meg Gardiner, was released in 2022. The time jump in the book isn't 25 years, though, so even if Robert De Niro and Al Pacino wanted to get the band back together, it really wouldn't fit the plot. Instead, there are rumors that Austin Butler could join the cast, along with Adam Driver. Mann is staying mum about those rumors.

What he did offer is that he hopes to get Heat 2 into production at the end of 2024 or early 2025. A sequel made so many years later might seem like an odd choice, but remember this is the same guy who revived Miami Vice, the TV show that made him famous, into a movie decades later. Heat itself is actually a remake of L.A. Takedown, a made-for-TV movie Mann did with a fraction of Heat's budget and star power.

"I think that film, what they did with it, is something that inspired me a lot," Butler recently said, when asked about the possibility of joining Heat 2. "I think it inspired so many actors, and I mean, to get to see De Niro and Pacino together for the first time in that way. It's such an authentic film as well, so visceral. But I think any opportunity to work with a master like Michael Mann is a gift to any actor who gets to work with him."

As far as Driver, Mann worked with him on Ferrari, but stopped short of confirming that there are plans to do it again, saying only that they had a great working experience and had the same, "intense" work ethic.

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"It's going to be a combination [of CG and makeup]. And so, it won't be [Robert De Niro] and Al [Pacino] playing McCauley and Hanna," Mann shared. "And it actually starts eight years earlier than the movie. It starts in 1988, and then it's gonna jump to 2000. But I don't really know who to cast until I've actually written the screenplay, but I'm in the middle of writing the screenplay right now. And Warner Bros. have been very patient."

What Is Heat 2 About?

The Heat 2 novel, co-written by Mann and Meg Gardiner, Meg Gardiner tells the story of everything that happens before and after to the film's principal characters. The novel jumps between two time periods, the first following Chris Shiherlis as he tries to evade LAPD and Detective Vincent Hanna following the bank robbery gone bad with the second taking us back to Chicago in 1988 when McCauley, Chris Shiherlis, and their high-line crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. At the same time, Hanna is cutting his teeth as a rising star in the Chicago police department chasing an ultraviolent gang of home invaders. The fallout from McCauley's scores and Hanna's pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative.

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