Michael Mann's "Heat 2" won't be rolling cameras this year after all.
Appearing on NBC's Today Show this morning, Stephen Graham said the sequel is now set to begin shooting in January.
Graham was on the show mainly to promote "Nocturne," his new thriller series in which he plays a convicted serial killer, but he also talked about the "Greyhound" sequel with Tom Hanks and "Heat 2" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale.
When Graham's casting was confirmed in September, production was set to begin in November. Before that, the target had been even earlier: Mann told The Guardian in December 2025 that he was eyeing an August start. And just a few weeks ago, Graham sounded ready to go; on UK radio's Heart Breakfast on September 28, he said he was flying out the next day.
"Heat 2" is structured as a sequel that flashes back to a prequel, with DiCaprio taking Val Kilmer's role and Bale playing the Al Pacino character, while Graham plays Robert De Niro's Neil McCauley in the earlier timeline. Adam Driver, Jason Clarke, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Odessa Young round out the announced cast.
"Heat 2" is adapted by Mann from his 2022 novel, co-written with Meg Gardiner, and Mann is producing alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt. The Amazon/MGM film will be a globe-spanning shoot, with filming set for Los Angeles, Chicago, Paraguay and Singapore. It's quite possible the delay has to do with scheduling conflicts among some of the actors.
This was originally a Warner Bros. project, but the studio got spooked by Mann's budget demands. Amazon then entered the picture. Backed by tech money, it agreed to give Mann the financing he needed: $165M, still less than his originally requested $200M budget. Mann also trimmed his once-190-page screenplay, and a $40M tax credit from the California Film Commission helped move the project forward.
A two-month push isn't a crisis for a production of this scale, but it likely ends any hope of a 2027 release. Even before the delay, a 2028 theatrical debut looked like the most probable outcome.
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