Director Michael Mann has said he wants to make a sequel to the iconic thriller, Heat.

The film, which was the first movie to bring Hollywood legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together for the first time, has become a classic crime thriller.

In 2016, Mann announced that a novel inspired by the film would be published by his own HarperCollins publishing imprint. Speaking about the book, he said, "The novel is about two-thirds written, and it's the prequel to 'Heat', and it's the sequel to 'Heat' rolled together,"

"So it's everything before the movie and everything after the movie."

When asked if he would look at producing a live-action movie of the book, Mann said absolutely – he just doesn’t know whether it would be a film or a series. “The landscape is changing so radically and so quickly, who knows?" he said.

The book is scheduled to be out next year. It is being co-written by crime author Reed Coleman.

The book is said to explore the time De Niro’s character Neil McCauley spent in prison in his twenties, as well as the years where Pacino’s cop Vincent Hanna worked in the Chicago police force.