We've known for a few years now that writer/director Michael Mann was ready to return to the dynamic world of his 1995 Los Angeles-set heist thriller Heat, but in book form (written with Meg Gardiner). And, with the arrival of a trailer for the novel, we now know that it'll follow the characters of the film before and after its storyline.
Featuring not only a classic face-off between Al Pacino's LAPD Homicide/Robbery lieutenant Vincent Hanna and Robert De Niro's master thief Neil McCauley but also the likes of Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Mykelti Williamson and Wes Studi in the cast, the film has gone down as one of the greatest crime films committed to celluloid. To follow that up is a challenge few would attempt, but the man who crafted the movie has been ready for a while.
"It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat," Mann tells Deadline. "There was always a rich history or back-story about the events in these people’s lives before 1995 in Heat and projection of where their lives would take them after." The book starts one day after the events of the movie, with a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Kilmer) desperate to escape LA. The story moves to both the six years preceding the heist and the years immediately following it, featuring new characters and new worlds of high-end professional crime, with highly cinematic action sequences. The venues range from the streets of LA to the inner sanctums of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in a South American free trade zone, to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, and eventually to Southeast Asia.
If you love Heat, you're going to want to read this – but you'll have to wait a little longer, as the book doesn't arrive until 9 August.