Update on Michael Mann’s ‘Heat 2’

In a recent interview with Vulture, Michael Mann confirms what I had reported three weeks ago: the script for “Heat 2” has been submitted to Warner Bros.

Mann refuses to comment further, and that’s understandable. He knows very well that it’ll take a miracle for Warners to give the green light on “Heat 2,” at least right now. The last thing the studio wants to do is give the go ahead on another $100M+ auteur-driven project. That’s the sad reality facing Mann’s passion project.

With “Joker: Folie a Deux,” which cost $200M, having bombed theatrically, and “Mickey 17” standing to lose well over $100M, not to mention the ‘Alto Knights’ debacle, Warners still has a slew of risky projects headed to theaters, including new films from Paul Thomas Anderson ($140M budget), Maggie Gyllenhaal ($100M), Ryan Coogler ($90M), David Robert Mitchell ($90M), and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ($120M+).

This doesn’t even take into account James Gunn’s “Superman” ($200M+) which is of “almost incalculable importance” to the future of Warner Bros, according to Puck. The studio needs to weather this storm before they embark on Mann’s pricey passion project.