Although his last effort, Blackhat, didn't rate highly in our ranking of his work, Michael Mann is still one of the most respected and talented directors working today.
His upcoming biopic on Enzo Ferrari is already gearing up (heh) to be a potential Oscar contender for 2018. However, beyond that, Mann's got some interesting projects lined up. It was confirmed today that Michael Mann is opening up an imprint that will generate a series of novels that will, in turn, be developed for television and film.
Yeah, it's sort of like reverse-engineering. Basically, the key takeaway point from this is that Mann has outlined an idea for a prequel to his masterpiece, Heat. Mann's plan is to work with a team of writers to develop novels, with the Heat prequel being his first priority. Mann's plan is to focus on the formative years of the characters in Heat, including Vincent Hanna (Pacino), Neil McCauley (DeNiro) and Seherlis (Kilmer).
What's interesting, however, is that Mann based these characters on real-life cops and robbers. There really was a bank-robber in Chicago in the '60s called Neil McCauley whilst Jon Voight's character was based on former criminal-turned-actor Eddie Bunker.
There's no definitive timeline as to when we'll see the Heat prequel in cinemas, however it's interesting to think about the possibilities of it all. Mann's never gone back for a sequel in any of his films, so why Heat? For one thing, we know he spent many years researching and rewriting the screenplay for it.
He even made a TV film to act as a dry-run for Heat; such was his level of preparedness for it all. If we get a film that's even half as good as Heat, it'll still be ten times better than most crime thrillers in recent years.
Via Deadline
