People in the news Michael Mann

Decades after the release of Michael Mann’s “Heat,” the classic crime thriller has endured in the minds of fans, critics, peers and the director himself. He had so much left to say.

“There’s always the sense of being shortchanged,” Mann said during a Zoom interview from his apartment in Modena, Italy, where he is currently working on “Ferrari,” starring Adam Driver as the race car driver-auto magnate. “I love doing the research and building these characters out very, very completely, and rooting the actor into a whole life. ... The movie is a splinter, it’s just a very narrow slice of a complete life.”

Mann has finally rounded out the story from his 1995 movie. He has brought back the lethal, calculating criminal Neil Mccauley, played by Robert De Niro; the swaggering detective Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino; and such supporting characters as Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore) and Nate (Jon Voight).

He does hope to make another “Heat” movie, but he has chosen to introduce his new narrative through words only, the novel

“Heat 2.”

Written with the awardwinning crime novelist Meg Gardiner and scheduled to come out Aug. 9, the 480-page “Heat 2” is a sequel and prequel, looking back to the late 1980s and ahead to the 21st century, expanding the world of Mccauley and Hanna and Shiherlis among others, adding new characters and moving the action everywhere from Los Angeles to Paraguay and Asia.

Mann had never attempted a novel before and finally tried in part for a similar reason he takes on a given film: To see if he can. In some ways, he approached the book as if planning a movie production. He began with a basic story — he likes to know in advance how the plot turns out — and built the narrative outward, over time and space. For his novel, he speaks of creating “momentum that is almost cinematic,” a symphony driving to a closing clash.