Though he's best known as a director, Michael Mann has always had a yen for literary properties – many of his movies are based on books, including Manhunter, The Last Of The Mohicans and Thief. He's now launching an imprint of his own, Michael Mann Books, and one of his initial plans is a prequel to crime classic Heat.
Yes, if you ever wondered about the formative years of homicide detective Vincent Hanna (so evocatively brought to life by Al Pacino), criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), and McCauley's accomplices including Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) and Nate (Jon Voight), now you might just get to see what they were all up to. For all we know, it'll also see the eatery that De Niro and Pacino have their famous sit-down in under construction (probably not).
Don't go thinking this is Mann forswearing time in the director's chair to lock himself in a room and start pounding keys all day: he's simply going to oversee (and occasionally work with) other writers working on novels and non-fiction tomes that will then be developed for film and television. So there's a chance the Heat prequel could end up on screen, but nothing has been decided yet, especially since the book doesn't even exist at this point.
Film-wise, Mann is continuing to put together his latest, a biopic of racing entrepreneur and designer Enzo Ferrari.