Christian Bale circled for Heat 2 starring role with Leonardo DiCaprio

Christian Bale is being eyed for a role in Heat 2.

The 51-year-old actor is in contention to star in director Michael Mann’s upcoming sequel to his 1995 heist thriller alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, also 51, Deadline has reported.

Although the outlet has said it does not know who Bale or DiCaprio could be playing in the movie, Deadline noted Heat 2’s script has “drawn strong interest from top talent”.

Production for Heat 2 - which is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt and Mann - is set to commence next year in Los Angeles.

Heat 2 will be based on Mann’s 2022 novel of the same name that the 82-year-old filmmaker co-wrote with Meg Gardiner.

The book unfolds across two timelines, with one following Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) as he flees the LAPD and Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) after the failed bank robbery seen in 1995’s Heat, eventually pushing the story into new territory in the tri-border zone and Southeast Asia.

The other returns to Chicago in 1988, where Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro), Shiherlis, and their elite crew are pulling scores on the West Coast, along the U.S.–Mexico border, and in the city itself, while Hanna begins his rise in the Chicago Police Department pursuing a brutal gang of home invaders.

Mann previously revealed he was planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) to experiment with “ageing and de-ageing” in Heat 2.

Speaking at the Lumiere Film Festival in France, he said: “I don't experiment with technology gratuitously. When I have a dramatic need or aesthetic need for it, then I go deep into what I need.”

The Collateral director - who received the 2025 Lumiere Award at the festival - added: “Ageing and de-ageing may be very important in the next film.”

In August, Heat 2 was axed by Warner Bros. due to budget concerns, but Mann feels the project’s move to Amazon MGM Studios-owned United Artists will allow the film to be made in the way he wants.

He explained: “Heat 2 is an expensive movie to make, but I believe it should be made at the proper size and scale.

“It's going to shoot in Chicago, Los Angeles and Paraguay, and possibly some parts of Singapore.

“People make dramas at a certain budget level, because of the costs, not because of anybody being greedy. If it was at a lower price, I could have made it anywhere. But it's complex. I can't get into all the politics of it.”

The Miami Vice filmmaker added the story of Heat 2 Mann would move both backwards and forwards in time from the original movie, much like the book it is based on.

He said: “The characters of Heat are so alive to me. An idea occurred to me, based on the rapport between two lethal adversaries, Pacino's Hanna and De Niro's McCauley, about how to do both before the events of Heat and after.”