Michael Mann won’t start filming Heat 2 until early next year, but things are already heating up legally between the acclaimed director and New Regency when it comes to 1995 crime classic.
After several attempts this year by the director to reclaim ownership of the original Heat screenplay under copyright termination, the Yariv Milchan-run company today took Mann to federal court to get the trio of notices declared “defective and invalid.” In the dispute, New Regency are claiming that Mann’s role in writing the Heat screenplay was that of a “work for hire,” and therefore his termination notices are DOA.
“Regency still holds the rights to the Heat Screenplay. As a result of its rights in and to the Screenplay, Regency owns the film, television, and other rights in the Heat film.”
Hit the brakes, says Ferrari helmer Mann’s team.
“This filing has to do with original and personal writing Michael Mann did on multiple screenplays during the 1980s and which evolved into the iconic 1995 film Heat that Mann wrote, produced and directed,” a spokesman for the Robert Klieger represented past Oscar nominee said late Friday of the Al Pacino and Robert De Niro starring movie. “After 40 years Michael Mann is exercising the right of authors to reclaim their work and in this case Michael Mann’s original creation.”
Even with some contractual rights reverted to him under the WGA Basic Agreement, the CAA-repped Mann insists that a temporality forgotten 1988 oral agreement between himself and two of his loan-out companies assigned him core Heat rights as an independent author.
Michael Mann, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on set of ‘Heat’
Warner Bros
“We will vigorously defend this action and are confident that the courts will vindicate Michael Mann’s statutory rights under the Copyright Act,” Mann’s team says. “For clarification, this is unrelated to production of Heat 2 which will begin shooting on January 19.”
In that context, the 1991 founded New Regency is thinking of the past and the future, the company’s Kendall Brill & Kellyl awyers say. “If given effect, the Termination Notices would purport to strip Regency, beginning in 2028, of rights it has held for more than three decades, clouding Regency’s title to the Screenplay and jeopardizing its ability to develop, finance, and license works derived from it,” the 20-page complaint for declaratory relief states.
“In addition, certain provisions of the agreements that Mann and Regency each entered into with Amazon with respect to Heat 2 depend on the outcome of this litigation.”
Speaking of the much anticipated, Heat 2, the Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Adam Driver, Stephen Graham and Jason Clarke starrer will see Mann directing the prequel flick from his own script. This particular script is based on Mann and Meg Gardiner’s No. 1 New York Times bestselling novel from 2022.
