Michael Mann shares updates about 'Heat 2' at Lyon's Lumière Film Festival

This year’s Lumière Festival in Lyon took its final bow with a screening of Michael Mann’s epic crime drama Heat. And what a way to cap off this year’s 17th edition, which feted the American director with its honorary Lumière Award.

The 1995 movie, starring Al Pacino as detective Vincent Hanna and Robert De Niro as criminal Neil McCauley, is considered one of Mann’s greatest. And a sequel is on the way.

“We’re in the middle of negotiations and it looks like it will go forward sometime in the summer of 2026,” shared the 82-year-old director during the festival.

Heat 2 is already a novel written by Mann and Meg Gardiner. It was published in 2022, and serves as both a prequel and a sequel to Heat.

Little has been officially confirmed regarding the film and its cast, with rumours suggesting that Adam Driver may be in line to play a young McCauley and Leonardo DiCaprio could be in early talks to portray Chris Shiherlis, a role played by the late Val Kilmer.

Mann did not confirm whether 85-year-old Pacino will reprise his role as surviving cop Hanna but did give journalists some more information regarding the sequel during a press conference this weekend.

Asked why he was keen to revisit the characters of Heat, especially since Mann has never done a sequel to one of his films, the director revealed it was due to his deep connection with the characters.

“The characters of 'Heat' are so alive to me that I know everything about outside the boundaries of the film. I know what De Niro’s character looked like when he was state raised as an 11-year-old, wearing clothes that didn’t match, being ostracized, which then made him aggressive and violent, which led to juvenile facilities,” said the director.

“I know everything about these characters. I always wanted to do more with these people, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it because one’s dead at the end of 'Heat',” he revealed. “Then the idea occurred to me based on the rapport between the two adversaries, Pacino’s Hanna and De Niro’s McCauley, about how to do both before the events of 'Heat' and after.”

Mann confirmed that Heat 2 would jump across timelines, exploring both before and after the events of the original film.

“It starts one day after 1995 and only Val Kilmer is alive, and he has to flee the United States,” Mann revealed. “And then it goes seven years earlier. It's 1988, and Hanna is a detective in Chicago, not Los Angeles. And in 1988, Hanna and McCauley are not the same people they are in 1995. It’s the events of 1988 which then turned them into the characters of 1995.”

He elaborated: “For example, McCauley, who has an idea of no attachment... Have nothing in your life that you can’t walk away from in 30 seconds flat. In 1988, he has a wife and a stepdaughter. He has a nuclear family that is very attached to him.”

Mann talked briefly about experimenting with AI and seemed to confirm that digital de-aging tools will play a role in Heat 2.

“I don't experiment with technology gratuitously. When I have a dramatic or aesthetic need for it, then I go deep into what I need. So, for example, aging and de-aging may be very important in the next film.”

Considering how de-aging technology went down in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, this could be controversial. Still, in Mann we want to trust.

The director confimed his hopes to begin filming in Summer 2026, with a view to releasing Heat 2 in 2027. He also addressed the studio switch from Warner Bros. to Amazon MGM, as Mann could not reach an agreement with Warner regarding the project’s budget.

"Heat 2 is an expensive movie to make, but I believe it should be made at the proper size and scale. It’s going to shoot in Chicago, Los Angeles, Paraguay, and possibly some parts in Singapore.”

“If it was at a low, low price, I could have made it anywhere. But it’s complex. I can’t get into all the politics of it, but we moved from Warner Brothers to Amazon and United Artists.”

Regarding whether the deal with the steaming giant could compromise the film’s theatrical release - in the same way Ferrari bypassed cinemas in certain European territories – Mann was reassuring.

“It will be absolutely released theatrically, in the United States, probably in about 4,000 cinemas and for at least 45 days,” he said, adding that he felt the streamer was entering a new era with regards to distribution.

“Amazon is in transition, which is why they bought Bond. They’re in a transition to become something more than a streaming service. They have ambitions be a major, I don’t want to speak for Amazon, a major figure in exhibition, in theatrical.”

He added: “The potential, because the movie would come out in almost two years from now, the potential of the synergy within Amazon is massive.”

Michael Mann is this year's Prix Lumière recipient. The festival took place in Lyon from 11 - 19 October 2025.