Michael Mann Says He Might Experiment With AI in ‘Heat 2:’ ‘Aging and De-Aging May Be Very Important’

While AI has been dividing Hollywood, Michael Mann is agnostic when it comes to it. In fact, he will likely be experimenting with it in “Heat 2.”

“I don’t I experiment with technology gratuitously,” Mann said. “When I have a dramatic need or esthetic need for it, then I go deep into what I need.”

He added, “Aging and de-aging may be very important in the next film,” Mann said, referring to the long-anticipated sequel to “Heat” which he said on Friday during a wide-ranging masterclass that will hopefully start filming next summer.

Mann, who received the Lumiere Award from the hands of Isabelle Huppert last night, also addressed the fact that “Heat 2” has moved from Warner Bros. to Amazon MGM-owned United Artists and producer Scott Stuber.

“Heat 2” is an “expensive movie to make, but I believe it should be made at the proper size and scale,” Mann said. “It’s going to shoot in Chicago, Los Angeles, Angeles, Paraguay, and possibly some parts in Singapore.”

“People make dramas at a certain budget level, because of the costs, not because of anybody being greedy. If it was at a lower price, I could have made it anywhere. But it’s complex. I can’t get into all the politics of it. But we moved from Warner Brothers to Amazon and United Artists, but it will be absolutely released theatrically, in the United States, probably in about 4,000 cinemas and for at least 45 days.

Regarding the plot of “Heat 2,” Mann said it would move back and forth in time, before and after the events of the original film. The story will pick up one day after the movie ends, “only Val Kilmer’s alive, and he has to flee the United States.”

“The characters of “Heat” are so alive to me. Then, an idea occurred to me, based on the rapport between two lethal adversaries, Pacino’s Hannah and De Niro’s McCauley, about how to do both before the events of “Heat” and after.” He pointed out that Hannah and McCauley were changed by events that occurred in 1988, when Hannah was a cop in Chicago and McCauley had “a wife, he has a stepdaughter, he has a nuclear family that he’s very attached to.”

Mann also gave an update on his following project set against the backdrop of the 1968 Battle of Hué, during the Vietnam War, which he’ll do after “Heat 2.”

The film will be based on a book by Mark Bowden, the helmer of “Black Hawk Down.” “It’s a very human, a very powerful piece, and I spent a lot of time and talked with a lot of survivors of that battle,” Mann said, adding that the book had also inspired Al Pacino’s character from “Heat” — “Al Pacino’s history, that he was a Marine who was in the Battle of Hue in 1968 and that in 1988 he’s still suffering from PTSD.”

That movie will be “like “Rashōmon” with several perspectives, several points of both the American side and on the Vietnamese side,” Mann teased.

Mann also said during yesterday’s masterclass that he’ll produce a Western titled “Comanche” which will be directed by Scott Cooper, whose latest film “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” played this week at Lumiere Festival