Amazon Feels the 'Heat 2'
Borys Kit
Film buffs hate the "favorite movie" question because there are always dozens to be named. But when pressed, my go-to answer is Heat. I saw it when it was released in movie theaters in 1995 and enjoyed every second of the two-hour-and-fifty-minute runtime.1 30 years later, it not only endures, it has gotten better with age. To the point where a sequel went from demanded to inevitable as Mann teamed up with author Meg Gardiner to write a Heat 2 novel. Finally, the movie wheels seem greased...
Heat 2, the high-profile Michael Mann follow-up to his 1995 crime drama classic, is getting a new home, ensuring that the ambitious and buzzy feature project will be getting made after all.
United Artists, the Amazon MGM Studios division, is in talks to pick up the project from Warner Bros., after the latter let the movie be shopped in August after not being able to agree with Mann on a budget. Hollywood vets Jerry Bruckheimer, known for high-octane action thrillers and the Top Gun movies, and Scott Stuber, who previously ran film for Netflix and is tied to UA, have boarded the project as producers. Mann and Stuber’s partner Nick Nesbitt are also producing.
It seems insane that Warner Bros would let Mann walk and Heat 2 go, but such is the state of the movie business at the moment. Heat may be the favorite movie of a bunch of 40 and 50-something dudes, but is, say, the TikTok generation going to rush out to go see it? I haven't been seeing any Soras featuring Neil McCauley...
Still. It's fucking Heat 2! You do it to say you're the studio that made Heat 2! Sadly, Warner Bros Discovery's precarious business situation – despite a rather wild run of hits of late – makes it even more of a money equation for them. But their aversion to any losses is Amazon's gain here.
Even after looking for possible production partners, Warners decided that the project was too financially risky and in August decided to let Mann shop it. While some studios and companies sat out of the competition, Heat 2 became a fight in the trenches among Amazon’s UA, Paramount, and Sony, according to insiders, as the studios wanted to have a chance to make what could turn out to be another crime classic.
The only real surprise is that Apple wasn't in the running here. Then again, perhaps they're still feeling the, um, heat, from agreeing to Martin Scorsese's budget for Killers of the Flower Moon. And when it failed to win best picture, they shifted gears to more popcorn-ready fare (at least when it comes to big budget movies) with F1. Probably the right call, but still – Heat 2!
But you know what's better than Heat 2? Heat 3!
Mann and Warners spent considerable time trying to come to an agreement on a budget, several sources said. The initial budget proposal came in at $230 million, according to one source. Mann eventually whittled it down to $170 million. Warners was ready to make it for $135 million or $140 million. Alternately, according to sources, it was willing to push the budget up to $150 million if Mann would commit to not only a Heat 2 but a Heat 3.
If it really came down to $20M, that's sort of silly. But perhaps Mann, who is 82, didn't want to sign up for his remaining days to be committed to one story. Then again, it's Heat 2! And Heat 3!
Anyway, if Warner Bros pockets are full of holes, $150M or even $200M is like a few hours worth of sales for Amazon. Actually, we can do the math – well, AI can. It takes Amazon two hours and forty-five minutes to do $200M in sales. In other words, in the amount of time it takes to watch Heat, Amazon rakes in the budget for Heat 2! And they're going to need every penny:
The crime thriller is coming with plenty of, um, Hollywood heat, as a bevy of A-listers have been mentioned in connection with the project. With Leonardo DiCaprio circling, other actors whose names have surfaced include Austin Butler, Adam Driver, Bradley Cooper, among others. However, no offers have been made to that talent, let alone any actor deals signed.
Everyone and anyone would take paycuts to do this with Mann, of course. Still, this cast plus locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and South America and you can see why the budget is what it is. And DiCaprio in particular now has a history with the budget/box office mismatch in the form of not only the aforementioned Killers of the Flower Moon, but now with One Battle After Another as well. That movie, despite being great and despite being Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest opening ever, is still, well, box office challenged. I still think a part of that was the marketing, but there's clearly a demographic element as well.
And Heat 2 will face some of the same pressure, though as a sequel to a beloved classic, it has at least somewhat of a built-in audience. Still, is it realistic to think Heat 2 can pull in $400M - $500M, which is probably what it would need to do at the box office just to break even (after marketing)? The first film made $187.4M worldwide ($67.4 million in the U.S. and $120 million internationally – and the strong international element may help Heat 2 here). And that budget was a mere $60M.
Actually in 2025 numbers, that worldwide gross is actually just shy of... $400M. And that first film budget would be just shy of $130M. So... there's a chance and a case to be made, fiscally, for Heat 2!
But what are we talking about here? You do Heat 2 because it's Heat 2.
One more thing: Again, none of these people are actually signed yet, but it has long been assumed that Adam Driver would play the young Neil McCauley, while Austin Butler was thought to be in the Chris Shiherlis role (Val Kilmer in the original) – but now DiCaprio is said to be playing Shiherlis. Though actually the book is a prequel and a sequel, so it's possible that DiCaprio is playing the older Shiherlis. This sounds funny until you realize that Kilmer was just 35 in the original and DiCaprio is about to turn 51, so it could work (Austin Butler, amazingly, is just one year younger than Kilmer was in the original.) Obviously, everyone wishes Kilmer was still around to reprise the role of his older self, but it also would have been hard to top his Top Gun Maverick send off.2
1 Fun fact: Heat was released just three weeks after another just-about-three-hour epic starring Robert DeNiro: Martin Scorsese's Casino. I saw both in theaters. What a one-two punch! ↩
2 Mainly I'm just happy they're not going to try to do the de-aging stuff with DeNiro – again. The model is The Godfather Part II here, when a young DeNiro played the young Marlon Brando.3 ↩
3 Incidentally, Leonardo DiCaprio was once circled for the never-made The Godfather Part IV, where he would have played the young Sonny Corleone (James Cann in the original). ↩