Christian Bale Circling Role in ‘Heat 2’ Movie

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has learned that Michael Mann has his Public Enemies star Christian Bale circling a major role alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Heat 2. Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists will start production next year on the second installment of Mann’s 1995 heist classic. Mann wrote the script based on the New York Times bestseller he authored with Meg Gardiner.

Amazon had no comment.

The film is being produced by Mann, Jerry Bruckheimer, Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt and executive producers Shane Salerno and Eric Roth.

It was not immediately clear which role Bale will play, but the script has drawn strong interest from top talent. Bale and DiCaprio have each won Oscars, giving Mann a chance to match the high bar he set with the original, which had Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer leading the ensemble.

The 1995 Heat starred Pacino at Detective Vincent Hanna, De Niro as Neil McCauley and Kilmer as Chris Shiherlis. While it was a solid hit, it has since become a crime classic with a global following.

Heat 2 the novel was penned by Mann and Gardiner but is not a novelization of the film; rather, it tells the story of everything that happens to the principal characters before and after the events of the original movie.

The book, published in 2022, jumps between two time periods. The first following Shiherlis as he tries to evade the LAPD and Hanna following the bank robbery gone bad, and which moves forward into new territory in the tri-border zone and Southeast Asia. The second storyline takes readers back to Chicago in 1988 when McCauley, Shiherlis and their high-line crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the U.S.-Mexico border and in the Windy City. At the same time, Hanna is cutting his teeth as a rising star in the Chicago Police Department chasing an ultraviolent gang of home invaders.

Bale is repped by WME and can be seen next opposite Jessie Buckley in the Warner Bros pic The Bride.