Screen legend Al Pacino has said that he would like fellow actor Timothée Chalamet to portray him in a prequel to the 1995 Michael Mann crime drama, Heat. The original film boasts an impressive cast that includes Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, and Natalie Portman. Centered around the lives of professional thief Neil McCauley (De Niro) and LAPD lieutenant Vincent Hanna, Heat’s tense action was matched by its emotional stakes.
Despite its shared billing with two of the biggest names in cinema, Heat didn’t end up becoming a major award winner. It received no Golden Globe or Oscar nominations but has nonetheless managed to remain a considerable favorite of many. Watching Pacino and De Niro share screen time is a real treat for audiences, and Mann’s cinematic style helps elevate the film beyond a mere heist tale. Most recently, Mann co-authored Heat 2, a prequel novel that is set to be officially released in August of 2022. With a new chapter in the Heat story now in existence, it seems just a matter of time before a film adaptation arrives.
During this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, both De Niro and Pacino were on hand for the premiere of a 4K restoration of Heat. According to EW, the two legends shared the stage while panel moderator Bilge Ebiri offered up what was arguably the event’s biggest question: could Heat 2 one day become a film, and if so, who would play Pacino and De Niro’s Hanna and McCauley characters? While De Niro wasn’t sure, Pacino wasted no time in selecting Call Me By Your Name star, Timothée Chalamet.
It will likely come across as an unexpected choice on the part of Pacino, particularly because Chalamet isn’t known as an action/crime-drama star. On top of that, Pacino’s early work as Michael Corleone isn’t exactly reminiscent of Chalamet. Should Heat 2 find success as a novel, it’s hard to imagine it not transitioning to the big screen, but that certainly doesn’t mean that Chalamet would be on board. It’s hard to say whether or not Pacino was just having fun with the audience and media when he responded, but the idea of Chalamet as a young version of Hanna provides at least some food for thought.
Whatever happens next, the fact that Mann has co-written a prequel novel to Heat is more than enough proof that the worlds of Hanna and McCauley are still alive and well in his mind. It’s hard to imagine Mann going to the effort of writing a prequel to such a beloved film and not taking it the full distance. Some fans might cringe at the idea of a Heat prequel, however – mainly because it couldn’t involve Pacino and De Niro. That being said, stranger things have certainly happened, and there’s no real reason to believe that Mann couldn’t find success with a prequel over 25 years after the original film arrived.
Source: EW