Heat 2 Director Shares Script Update & Addresses Casting Rumors

Summary

• Michael Mann confirms that he’s still working on the script for
  Heat 2
  .
• Like the novel, the movie will be both a sequel and a prequel, picking up directly after the events of the original film.
• Casting for the film has not yet commenced and won’t begin until the script is done, but Adam Driver and Austin Butler are rumored to be top choices.

Heat 2 director Michael Mann shares an update on the follow-up movie and comments on whether anybody has been cast. Released in 1995, Heat has gone down as one of Mann’s best and most memorable films. The story follows Robert De Niro’s Neil McCauley, a thief, and Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna, a cop, as they become entwined in a game of cat and mouse. A follow-up novel was released in 2022, and it was so popular that Mann is now working on a movie adaptation.

During a recent interview on Table For Two with Bruce Bozzi, an iHeartPodcast presented by iHeartPodcasts and Air Mail, Mann provides an update on Heat 2‘s development, confirming that he’s still in the script stage. The filmmaker also touches on casting for the sequel, denying that any actor has been cast despite persistent rumors to the contrary. Check out his comments below in which he also touches on the movie’s planned story:

“I’m writing the screenplay right now. And it comes from having so much background and then protracting where some of these lives go. What I had to figure out is a device, a story, that can keep the end of it and the beginning – it is a prequel and a sequel. Starts in ’88, it actually starts on the first day after the end of the movie with val Kilmer trying to get out of L.A.

“He’s wounded and half delirious. And then it goes back to 1988 and they’re very different people. They’re not the people they are in the movie. It’s the events of ’88 that made them into the people they are in the movie. So the De Niro character, Neil McCauley, is deep into a relationship with a woman, he has a step daughter. He has all these attachments. And then what happens in 2000 takes us into a whole different world, trans-national organized crime and Ciudad del Este, which is a free trade zone in South American and Southeast Asia.

“I’ve had some conversations with some people, but I can’t really cast until the screenplay is written.”

Heat 2’s Casting Rumors Explained

Who Adam Driver & Austin Butler Are Rumored To Play

It’s been nearly 30 years since the original film was released, meaning Heat 2‘s cast will probably not include any returning actors. Pacino, after all, is now in his 80s, and Kilmer, who played Heat‘s Chris Shiherlis, also looks older and has reduced his acting output following his battle with throat cancer. Since part of the story takes place in the years before the events of the original film and part of it picks up directly afterward, recasting the surviving characters makes the most sense.

Heat
is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel.

There’s been no official casting announcements for the sequel, but Adam Driver has been rumored to be a top choice for the role of a young Neil. During an interview with JoBlo in December, Driver addressed the Heat 2 casting rumors, saying he’s “not sure” about his involvement in the project. Chris, the sole survivor of Neil’s gang after the Heat ending, is also a central character in the novel, and Austin Butler has been rumored to be attached.

Butler hasn’t responded to these rumors, but a video recently emerged on social media of him doing some serious training at a gun range, adding further fuel to the fire. Until official reports emerge, however, both Driver and Butler’s rumored castings are just that: rumors. With Mann still working away on the Heat 2 script, hopefully more updates regarding the project will emerge in the coming weeks and months.

Source: Table For Two With Bruce Bozzi