Michael Mann has been chatting about what he want to do once he’s finished making Heat 2 – and it’s a Vietnam movie.
Will Heat 2 happen? The director of 1995’s Heat, Michael Mann, is behind the sequel, the story (should it follow his 2022 novel) is a worthy continuation of the original tale, and there’s no shortage of acting talent reportedly being lined up to take over the roles previously played by the likes of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Mann has cast just a little bit of doubt on the project recently, however, stating that “nothing’s definitely going [forward] because the sky may fall. But Heat 2 is at Warner Bros. I’m writing the screenplay for them, and hopefully, we will go forward as soon as possible.”
Having a film at Warner Bros these days is a bit like watching the sky and wondering if that sky above seems to be wavering slightly. If the studio isn’t deleting films or sticking them straight onto streaming, it’s delaying them and recutting them as we’ve seen recently with Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 and perhaps now David Robert Mitchell’s Flowervale Street.
If it means that Heat 2 has to go through script revisions to ensure that the rest of the film’s production is smoother, so be it. But Mann already has one eye on his next project, and it sounds like he’s revived his interest in a Vietnam film he’s spoken of before.
Speaking at the Red Sea Film Festival (as picked up by Deadline), Mann reiterated that he wants to make a film focused on the 1968 Battle of Hué, one of the hardest-fought episodes of the Vietnam War in which the forces of South Vietnam and US troops recaptured the city of Hué after several weeks of conflict.
Last year’s Ferrari was Mann’s first film in over eight years, but with Heat 2 hopefully not too far from going in front of cameras, the next period of his career will potentially be a little more prolific. We’ve seen Mann work in lots of genres before, but he hasn’t done a war movie. Here’s hoping that Heat 2 is successful enough to give the filmmaker a shot at pursuing his next passion project in the near future.
