Director Michael Mann (right) attended the announcement of the 23rd Edition Program of COLCOA French Film Festival in Los Angeles. — AFP Photo

LOS ANGELES — Michael Mann wants to make a big-screen sequel to Heat, the iconic movie that brought Hollywood legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together for the first time, the director has said.

The sprawling 1995 epic starring Pacino as a Los Angeles detective pursuing De Niro's heist gang boss across the city is considered a classic crime thriller.

Mann announced in 2016 that a novel inspired by Heat would be published by his own HarperCollins publishing imprint – and shared fresh details with AFP.

"The novel is about two-thirds written, and it's the prequel to Heat and it's the sequel to Heat rolled together," said Mann. "So it's everything before the movie and everything after the movie."

Asked if he plans to give the novel the movie treatment, Mann said: "Of course!" before adding that he could also foresee it evolving into a television series.

"Initially a film, but the landscape is changing so radically and so quickly, who knows?" he said.

Mann said the book would explore the time De Niro's character Neil McCauley spent in prison in his twenties, as well as the years Pacino's cop Vincent Hanna worked on the Chicago police force before moving to Los Angeles.

It will also feature the childhood of Val Kilmer's character, young bank robber Chris Shiherlis.

Mann, 76, is co-writing the book with crime author Reed Coleman, and it is due to be published next year, he said.

The original Heat, lauded for its striking neo-noir cinematography, featured a meeting in a diner between the two leads that marked their first scene together after appearing separately in The Godfather: Part II 21 years earlier.

Pacino and De Niro will be reunited on the big screen later this year for Martin Scorsese's gangster film The Irishman. — AFP