The classic heist movie Heat is getting an accompanying novel, a quarter century after its release: more details on it here.
Michael Mann’s Heat is one of those films that continues to dominate cinema conversations, over 25 years since its release. Whenever film fans talk about best L.A. movies, the film is in the running. Best scenes with movie stars going toe-to-toe, it’s always in the conversation. Best heist movie? Well, it’s never far from the top.
As a film with a very strong critical reception, that hasn’t diluted at all in the quarter century since its release, fans of Heat will be pleased to hear that the film is getting both a prequel and a sequel of sorts, in the form of a novel, that may yet extend to a series of books. It’s something that’s been on the cards for years, but has finally come to fruition.
Writer and director Michael Mann, has revealed that the book will be coming out next summer, and will flesh out the stories of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s respective cop and robber, as well as other characters from the film. “It’s so vivid, worked out and thorough that compelled us…we’ve written a novel. Not on Heat, but everything preceding Heat and everything following Heat and it’s because these characters are so vivid. It’ll be coming out next summer.”
Mann revealed just how much backstory he has on each character already, simply from making the movie all those years ago.
Giving Al Pacino’s cop character as an example, he says “I have a complete biography of Vincent Hanna, from when he grew up in Illinois, who his father was, driving trucks for some rural Illinois bootleggers, and how he wanted to flee for something else and it was either go to some lousy local college, but instead he joins the Marines and winds up [part of] Tet Offensive in Vietnam and then what he sees there and his desire to go to law school… then he joins the Chicago police department. What he really wants in his life is discovering a pursuit.”
If that wasn’t exciting enough for Heat fans, Mann also hinted that the story of Heat might even be returning to screens in some capacity, telling the excellent podcast, The Rewatchables that “it’s a stack about 10 inches high on my desk right now. We’re on it, and I’m putting time into that and a screenplay I can’t tell you about. But I absolutely want to make a movie of the Heat prequel.”
Exciting news indeed. We’ll keep you posted on this one as we hear more.
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