While AI divides Hollywood, Michael Mann is agnostic on it. In fact, he’ll probably experience it in “Heat 2.”
“I don’t experiment with technology for free,” Mann said. “When I have a dramatic need for it or an aesthetic need, then I go deeper into what I need.”
He added: “Aging and aging could be very important in the next movie,” Mann said, referring to the long-awaited “Heat” sequel, which he spoke about Friday during an extensive masterclass that will hopefully begin filming next summer.
Mann, who received the Lumière Prize from Isabelle Huppert last night, also discussed the fact that “Heat 2” was transferred from Warner Bros. to United Artists, owned by Amazon MGM, and producer Scott Stuber.
“Heat 2” is an “expensive movie to make, but I think it should be made at the right size and scale,” Mann said. “Filming will take place in Chicago, Los Angeles, Angeles, Paraguay and possibly parts of Singapore.”
“People make dramas at a certain level of budget, because of the costs, not because anyone is greedy. If it was at a lower price, I could have made it anywhere. But it’s complex. I can’t get into the whole politics of it. But we went from Warner Brothers to Amazon and United Artists, but it will absolutely be released theatrically, in the United States, probably in about 4,000 theaters and for at least 45 days.
Regarding the plot of “Heat 2,” Mann said it will move through time, before and after the events of the original film. The story will resume one day after the end of the film, “only Val Kilmer is alive and he must flee the United States”.
“The characters in ‘Heat’ are so vivid to me. Then an idea came to me, based on the rapport between two mortal adversaries, Pacino’s Hannah and De Niro’s McCauley, about how to do both before and after the events of ‘Heat.'” He pointed out that Hannah and McCauley had been changed by the events that happened in 1988, when Hannah was a cop in Chicago and that McCauley had “a wife, he has a stepdaughter, he has a nuclear family that he is very attached to.”
Mann also provided an update on his next project, set against the backdrop of the 1968 Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War, which he will direct after “Heat 2.”
The film will be based on a book by Mark Bowden, the director of “Black Hawk Down.” “It’s a very human play, very powerful, and I’ve spent a lot of time and talked with a lot of survivors of that battle,” Mann said, adding that the book also inspired the character of Al Pacino from “Heat” — “The story of Al Pacino, that he was a Marine who fought in the Battle of Hue in 1968 and in 1988 he still suffers from PTSD.”
This film will be “like ‘Rashōmon’ with multiple perspectives, multiple points from both the American side and the Vietnamese side,” Mann teased.
Mann also said during yesterday’s masterclass that he will produce a western called “Comanche” to be directed by Scott Cooper, whose latest film “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” screened this week at the Lumière Festival.
