Michael Mann confirms that he’s submitted his script for Heat 2 to Warner Bros. And now we wait for the studio to decide what to do next.
There are presumably better times to hand a fresh screenplay draft into Warner Bros than now. It’s facing commercial red ink on its recently-released Mickey 17, there’s a change in studio head coming, and its slate has just been moved around to try and eke out some profitability. And now, Michael Mann has confirmed that he’s sent in a draft of his long-planned Heat 2.
Mann has said to Vulture that he’s submitted his script, which presumably builds on the success of the relatively-recently published Heat 2 novel that he penned with Meg Gardiner. That was published back in 2022, and it’s expected that it’ll be the foundation of the new film (although last summer, Mann confirmed that it’ll expand beyond the book as well).
Adam Driver – who led Michael Mann’s last film, Ferrari – is set to star in Heat 2, but the price tag for the new movie is likely to be comfortably in nine figures. Appreciating Warner Bros has been giving sizeable budgets to auteur filmmakers such as Bong Joon-ho and Paul Thomas Anderson in recent times, commercially the suspicion is those gambles won’t pay off. That may count against it pressing ahead with a Heat sequel.
Mann confirmed that the script has gone to Warner Bros, and any progress may well hinge on who Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav hires to run the movie studio side of things. It’s clear that the mandate will be to generate more hits, and even appreciating that Heat is a sequel with some degree of built-in audience, it’s still uncertain times at the moment.
Austin Butler was rumoured to be on the list to co-star in the film. When we hear more about it, we’ll let you know. Bottom line: it’s written, but will a studio stump up to make it? We wait and see.
