Once upon a time in Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio might be the savior of Heat 2. Michael Mann’s long-gestating sequel to his 1995 classic Heat has hit a funding roadblock, Matthew Belloni reports at Puck, and as a friend to male auteurs everywhere, DiCaprio could be the key to finally getting the project off the ground. “In a twist, Leo DiCaprio has had conversations with Mann about starring,” Belloni writes.
Released in 2022 and written by Mann and novelist Meg Gardiner, Heat 2 is a split-timeline prequel and sequel to Heat, in which Al Pacino and Robert De Niro faced off as LAPD detective Vincent Hanna and professional thief Neil McCauley. By the end of that film, Neil is dead, and the only remaining member of his crew — Val Kilmer’s Chris Shiherlis — has disappeared somewhere over the border. Heat 2 jumps back in time to Chicago in the late 1980s, when Hanna, McCauley, and Shiherlis are unknowingly working on opposite sides of the cop-and-criminal divide, and forward through the early aughts, when Shiherlis has become embedded muscle within a Taiwanese Paraguayan crime family. The book is a feast for Heat fans, and not just because Mann and Gardiner describe Shiherlis in extremely hot terms (“Young, ripped, with blond hair and dead, cold eyes. Surfer sociopath in jeans and a flannel shirt”); there’s backstory here about McCauley and why he eventually adopted the “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything” mantra, as well as a fascinating arc for Hanna after his run-in with Neil’s crew.
Mann’s been trying to get the movie made for years, and in March 2025, he told Vulture he’d just handed in the first draft of the screenplay to Warner Bros. And it’s Warner Bros. that is balking at Mann’s initial budget estimate of $200 million; Mann lowered that amount to $170 million, Belloni reports, but Warner Bros. wants to get it still lower or partner with another studio or streamer to fund the film. The studio is probably worried because of Mann’s most recent box-office returns — Ferrari made about $44 million against a $95 million budget; Blackhat nearly $20 million against $70 million — but this is Heat! One of the best-aged and most critically admired films of its genre! A film that inspired me to try to purchase every piece of merch ever produced! It even made nearly $190 million in 1995, and its reputation has only improved with time! Can my Mann catch a break?
Apple has a copy of the script now, too, which makes DiCaprio’s interest in Heat 2 that much more interesting. (Recall that DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s most recent film, Killers of the Flower Moon, was an Apple joint.) If DiCaprio were to join the Heat 2 cast — which has been rumored to include Adam Driver and Austin Butler — who’d he play? Our best guess is McCauley, which would further DiCaprio’s careerlong comparisons to De Niro and give the film the juice it needs. As long as this doesn’t take too long to come together. Remember, time is luck.
Climate change is bad, obviously. But for now, embrace the Heat.
