‘Heat 2’ Novel by Michael Mann to Explore Events Before and After Movie

Just over 26 years after the Michael Mann‘s classic crime film Heat landed in theaters, the beloved film is getting a sequel — with a twist. Heat 2, which will follow the Heat characters before and after the events of the movie, will be a novel written by Mann in collaboration with Edgar-winning author Meg Gardiner. The novel, coming from the HarperCollins-based Michael Mann Books, will be released later this year on Aug. 9.

The news was announced in a tweet shared to Mann’s Twitter account today with Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Water,” iconic music from the original film’s end, playing over the trailer.

“It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat,” Mann told Deadline about the book. “There was always a rich history or back-story about the events in these people’s lives before 1995 in Heat and projection of where their lives would take them after.”

The book represents the first novel from Michael Mann Books, as well as Mann’s first foray into novel writing. Per Deadline’s reporting on the book, the novel Heat 2 will pick up one day after the events of the film, wherein a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is desperate to escape Los Angeles. The story circulates between six years preceding the heist and the years immediately following it, introducing new characters and techniques of professional crime to keep the book as cinematic as ever.

“The venues range from the streets of L.A. to the inner sanctums of rival Taiwanese crime syndicates in a South American free trade zone, to a massive drug cartel money-laundering operation just over the border in Mexico, and eventually to Southeast Asia,” the description reads. “Heat 2 explores the dangerous workings of international criminal organizations with full-blooded portraits of its male and female inhabitants.”

The book is also set to cover the lives of master thieves McCauley and Shiherlis, whose character becomes central in the post-1995 world of Heat, as well as Charlene (Ashley Judd), Nate (Jon Voight), Trejo (Danny Trejo) and the wheelchair-bound Kelso (Tom Noonan), who provided the bank alarm schematics to McCauley in the film.

“The bank job was not the first time Kelso worked with McCauley, and not the last time he will work with Chris,” Mann revealed. “When I was writing the film, it was imperative for me to create complete life stories about all the characters and to know everything about them, including Neil McCauley’s early institutionalized years when he lost track of his brother, before he parachuted into the streets, young, angry and dangerous.”

Heat 2 will release on August 9. You can pre-order your copy now.

Where to watch Heat