‘Heat 2’ announced! Will Al Pacino and Robert De Niro return for live-action sequel to 1995 classic?
'Heat' director Michael Mann teased a sequel in a Saturday Twitter post. 'Heat 2 is coming soon!' Mann tweeted a black-and-white image that appeared to allude to a live-action production.
Mann is currently promoting his co-written 'Heat 2' novel with Meg Gardiner. He recently assured fans that a follow-up to the 1995 crime classic is still in the works. Mann tweeted the brief message on Saturday morning, July 30, along with an image of two masked bank robbers in a semi-truck. 'Heat 2 is coming soon,' said the tweet, leaving fans with no other information.
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'Heat,' starring Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino, was released in 1995. Mann's film is about a career thief and his discord with an LAPD detective, as well as the impact it has on their personal and professional lives. Mann first wrote the script for 'Heat' in 1979 for a pilot that later became the 1989 television movie 'L.A. Takedown.' 'Heat' was inspired by the 1960s crime of Neil McCauley and Detective Chuck Adamson. He transformed the script into a feature film five years later, releasing it on December 15, 1995.
'Heat 2' has been in the works for over three decades. In an interview with Deadline, Mann stated that he has always intended to revisit Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and thief Neil McCauley's (Robert De Niro) mythos, asserting, "There was always a rich history or back-story about the events in these people’s lives before 1995 in Heat and projection of where their lives would take them after.” The HarperCollins novel spans 'Heat's past and future, chronicling the six years preceding the events of 'Heat,' starting one day after the end credits roll. The lens pulls out from the first film's narrow focus on Los Angeles, exploring the vast underground of international crime, while still attempting to get to the heart of what made these two noir icons, McCauley and Hanna, who they'd become in 'Heat.'
Mann has this to say about the impending novel and film: “When I was writing the film, it was imperative for me to create complete life stories about all the characters and to know everything about them, including Neil McCauley’s early institutionalized years when he lost track of his brother, before he parachuted into the streets, young, angry and dangerous. And, the novel shows a McCauley very much attached and the dramatic events that resulted in his dictum that “if you’re making moves on the street, have no attachments, allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.”
Will the sequel star De Niro and Pacino again?
In 'Heat,' De Niro and Pacino made their first on-screen appearance together. Mann previously stated his desire to make a sequel to his 'Heat 2' novel. "It's totally planned to be a movie. Is it a modest movie? No. Is it a very expensive [television]series? No. It's going to be one large movie," Mann told Empire in May.
According to the outlet, Pacino, Kilmer, and De Niro are unlikely to return for the sequel. Based on the outlet, this is due to their age, with the director clarifying that they would be too old to play their characters in the sequel in scenes set prior to the events of the original film. In the first film, De Niro's character was killed. Earlier, Pacino, who portrays the tenacious Lieutenant Vincent Hanna in the film, remarked at Tribeca that if the novel were to be adapted for the big screen, he would like to see Timothée Chalamet embody his younger self.
'Heat 2' is scheduled to hit bookstores on August 9. The 'Heat 2' film chronology and casting, as well as the expected release date, are still unknown. 'Heat 2' will return to the world Mann has been imagining since the late 1970s, with a conclusion that he describes as "both ironic and complete." Fans will have a better grasp of the legendary McCauley and Hanna, as well as learn where the conclusion of 'Heat' left McCauley's protégé, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer).
