Michael Mann Announces Heat 2, a New Novel That’s Both Prequel and Sequel

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The post Michael Mann Announces Heat 2, a New Novel That’s Both Prequel and Sequel appeared first on Consequence.

For the first time in over 25 years, you can “spot the heat around the corner.” Michael Mann has announced Heat 2, his first novel co-written with Edgar-winner Meg Gardiner that will serve as both a prequel and a sequel to the 1995 film. Heat 2 arrives August 9th from William Morrow and Michael Mann Books.

Heat followed the pursuit of career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) by LAPD cop Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), while paying special attention to the way they relate to each other more than most of the people around them. The famed dinner scene raised the emotional stakes of the final shootout, while also marking the first time that De Niro and Pacino had appeared together on screen.

“It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat,” Mann told Deadline. “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 picks up the day after the events of the film, but the storytelling isn’t linear. It also goes six years into the past and forward into the future, covering events from 1989 to 2002 while introducing new characters and crimes.

“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.'”

Mann’s announcement of the book is accompanied by a teaser trailer. It features Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Water,” which soundtracked Heat‘s final moments, and you can check it out below. If you’d like, you can also revisit our ranking of every Michael Mann film now.

Michael Mann Announces Heat 2, a New Novel That’s Both Prequel and Sequel
Wren Graves

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