Mann: “Heat 2” Script Finished & Handed In

Warner Bros. Pictures
Michael Mann has finally finished the screenplay for the long-awaited sequel to the Al Pacino and Robert De Niro-led 1995 crime thriller “Heat”.

Speaking with Vulture this week, he was asked about the status of the project and says he “just finished the screenplay and handed in the first draft”.

Asked whom the draft was handed to, he said: “Any more than that, I can’t talk about. But it’s an exciting project.”

The completion has felt like a long time coming. Despite having written the work as a novel which was released a while back, Mann has taken his time adapting that into a screenplay.

Back in August he told Katie Walsh and Dark Horizons alum Blake Howard at a a screening Q&A: “I’m working on the script like seven days a week and… it’s large. It’s as large as the original, which was 2 hours 45 minutes.”

In the new interview, Mann also talked about the legacy of his filmmaking style, saying he’s something of an accidental auteur:

“I’m not a journeyman director; I’d like to be, because I love shooting. But I put a lot into a film, and so I think sometimes they have layers of relating, They’re not simple. They may be totally accessible – not all my films, but some of them may be accessible just as something that’s going to flow, just going to occupy you for two hours, or two hours and 45 minutes in the case of ‘Heat’ and ‘Insider’ – but there’s also a lot there, because my ambition was to put a lot of depth into it.”

Whether Warners, with its shift towards more big IP-driven titles in the near future, will proceed with the project is unclear at present.