Michael Mann to co-write Heat prequel novel with Reed Farrel Coleman
Mark this under news you didn’t quite expect to ever be reading, but filmmaker Michael Mann has announced he will team up with four-time Edgar Award-nominated author Reed Farrel Coleman to co-write a prequel novel for his landmark crime film Heat. The book will be published in 2018 under the Michael Mann imprint at William Morrow/HarperCollins.
Mann wrote, directed and produced the 1995 film, which starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as a police officer and major criminal caught in a game of pursuit with each other. The film makes references to past scores that De Niro’s character accomplished and major criminals that Pacino’s character hunted, and the novel will explore both of these story elements while expanding the world of Heat, its characters, and their criminal ambitions.
Heat celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year, and was the subject of a number of laudatory tributes and retrospectives, including one at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences moderated by Christopher Nolan. On May 9, 2017, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release the Director’s Definitive Edition of Heat, including an all-new restoration overseen by Mann, on Blu-ray and DVD.
The film, which featured a sizable ensemble cast that also included Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd, Ted Levine, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Natalie Portman, Tom Noonan, Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, and Jeremy Piven, brought in over $187 million at the global box office upon release.
