We already know that Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio have been attached to star in the sequel to Michael Mann's iconic 1995 film "Heat". There's finally some momentum on the casting update, as the two actors' involvement is almost 100 per cent confirmed, per The Wrap. A final round of negotiations remains, indicating that they will indeed be part of the movie. The report also added that Amazon MGM Studios, which is backing the project, said the deals have not yet been finalised.
Mann is already gearing up to begin filming in November, said the report, which quoted a couple of sources close to production. So what characters are DiCaprio and Bale playing? The former is not playing, as earlier reports suggested, De Niro's character Neil McCauley, but Chris Shiherlis, the one played by Val Kilmer in the original. Bale, on the other hand, is said to be playing Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna.
But McCauley is also said to be very much part of the film, given that the source material — the 2022 novel "Heat 2", written by Mann and Meg Gardiner, 27 years after the first film's release — features both the past (1980s) and present (2000s) portions. "Heat 2" will serve as both a sequel and a prequel in the vein of "The Godfather - Part II". The one name that continues to be attached to McCauley's casting is Stephen Graham ("Adolescence", "Boiling Point").
Interestingly, Adam Driver's name is attached to the new character, and the film's chief antagonist, Otis Lloyd Wardell, who appears in the 1988 Chicago timeline. Some book readers have described him as someone even crazier than Waingro from the first film. Wardell is a violently sadistic leader of a home-invasion crew — a cold-blooded and disciplined psychopath, who is pursued relentlessly by Hanna for decades.
Ashley Judd's character from the original, Charlene, and Chris's wife, is the other character for whom the casting isn't official either.
"Heat 2" would mark the second collaboration between Bale and Mann after "Public Enemies" as well as DiCaprio, who previously starred in a movie co-produced by Mann, Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" (originally supposed to be directed by Mann, who passed it on to Scorsese since he had already done another biopic, "Ali").
Notably, "Heat 2" would also mark the second collaboration between Mann and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who had co-produced the former's directorial debut "Thief", after 45 years. The blockbuster producer's involvement suggests the film would be even bigger than its predecessor. The Wrap quotes a source saying that the action sequences are going to be on a large scale, adding that it's "'Spartacus' with machine guns" and "'John Wick' times 1,000.” We hope it's not hyperbole. We also hope that no matter how big the scale gets, Mann keeps the filmmaking approach as grounded as he did in the 1995 film — or "Thief" or "Collateral", for that matter — instead of going too digital.
The other producers of "Heat 2" include Amazon MGM/United Artists executives Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt, aside from Art Linson and Jan Pance.
