Michael Mann has officially finished the screenplay for “Heat 2,” the long-awaited sequel to his 1995 crime drama starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
In response to a question about the the status of the project in an interview with Vulture, the legendary director said that he had “just finished the screenplay and handed in the first draft.” When asked who he handed it to exactly, Mann said Warner Bros., who released the first film. “Any more than that, I can’t talk about. But it’s an exciting project,” he added.
Mann had previously said during a masterclass at the Red Sea Film Festival that the script had “to be finished pretty soon” and that he would be doing so “on the plane ride back to Los Angeles.”
Elsewhere in the Q&A with Vulture, Mann also addressed the long legacy of some of his older films and how they connect to his filmmaking style. “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,” he said.
“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 goingc 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,” Mann added.
“Heat,” which celebrates this year the 30th anniversary of its original release, was a visceral thriller bolstered by a face-off between two explosive characters, an LAPD detective, played by Pacino, and a high-profile thief, played by De Niro.
During the masterclass in Red Sea, Mann also said he was still looking to delve into his project set against the backdrop of the 1968 Battle of Hué, during the Vietnam War.
Mann’s other projects also include a U.S. adaptation of South Korean crime thriller “Veteran,” which Variety reported last year as being in development.
