Leonardo DiCaprio Officially Confirms He’ll Star in ‘Heat 2’

For Leonardo DiCaprio, the action is the juice.

After months and months of rumors that were all-but-confirmed, the Titanic actor officially announced his involvement with the sequel to Michael Mann’s classic 1995 crime thriller.

Mann released Heat 2 released in novel form in 2022 as a sequel/prequel to his original film, with most of the film’s characters returning in the book.

In 2023, a film adaptation was announced, but due to early budget issues with Warner Bros the production stalled. 2025 saw United Artists and Amazon MGM Studios pick up the project, and rumors around casting (Adam Driver, Austin Butler, Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum, and Jeremy Allen White have all been attached to the project at one point) have fervently swirled since.

Current speculation says Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star as criminal Chris Shiherlis, who was played by Val Kilmer in the original 1995 film, and Christian Bale will play LAPD detective Vincent Hanna, who was originally played by Al Pacino.

While speaking to Deadline about his newest movie, the 2025 Oscar frontrunner One Battle After Another, DiCaprio finally broke his silence on the film. While he wouldn’t confirm if he was playing Shiherlis or Hanna, saying he was still “mid-discussion” with Mann about it, he did say he will be one of the film’s leading men.

“This is very much its own movie. We’re still working on it, we’re a ways away from production. It tips its hat to Heat, but it’s an homage, and it picks up the story from there,” he said. “It’s one of those films that just keeps resonating, that we keep talking about, that has been imitated so many times and influenced so many different movies… We can’t duplicate what Heat was, so it’s paying homage to that film, but giving it its own unique entity.”

Heat 2 will film in 2026.