Heat 2: Michael Mann shares details on the sequel novel

Michael Mann’s Heat is one of the greatest crime dramas of all-time. Not only did the film feature an ensemble of wonderful actors, but it also showcased the first occurrence of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sharing a scene. As it’s been nearly thirty years since the film was first released, the time for a direct sequel has obviously passed,but Michael Mann will soon be returning to that world with Heat 2, a sequel novel he wrote with Meg Gardiner.

It was revealed today that Heat 2 will be released on August 9th and Michael Mann dropped a few details about the novel while speaking with Deadline. Not only will the novel explore what happened after the events of the original movie, but it will also flash back to before those events.

It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat. 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.

Heat 2 kicks off just one day after the events of the movie as it follows a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) desperately trying to escape Los Angeles. “The story moves to both the six years preceding the heist and the years immediately following it, featuring new characters and new worlds of high-end professional crime, with highly cinematic action sequences,” reads Deadline’s description. “The venues range from the streets of L.A. to the inner sanctums of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in a South American free trade zone, to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, and eventually to Southeast Asia. Heat 2 explores the dangerous workings of international criminal organizations with full-blooded portraits of its male and female inhabitants.”

The sequel novel will also dive into the lives of Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), with flashbacks revealing just how they became the men they are in the 1995 movie. “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,” Mann said, “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.” Heat 2 will also explore Hanna’s early cases and how he became a hunter a men, in addition to the rest of the Heat characters.

Are you going to read the Heat sequel novel? Would you rather just see the movie version?