Featured Image Credit: Alamy/Alamy
Topics: Robert De Niro, Film and TV
Aisha Nozari
Al Pacino has said he’d like Timothee Chalamet to play him in a Heat prequel.
The acclaimed 1995 crime drama saw Pacino take on the role of detective Vincent Hanna and also starred Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and Natalie Portman.
Pacino not only praised Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated acting abilities, but said the heartthrob has ‘great looks’.
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Pacino was speaking alongside De Niro at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, and his comments were reported on by Variety, with the outlet noting that the audience ‘burst into applause’.
Pacino and De Niro were taking part in a panel to celebrate Heat’s 25th anniversary (a milestone delayed by the pandemic) when the former was asked who he’d like to see take on the role of Hanna should a prequel go into production.
Pacino said: “Timothée Chalamet. I mean, he’s a wonderful actor. Great looks.”
The hypothetical prequel was being discussed in relation to writer-director Michael Mann’s upcoming book Heat 2, which is both a prequel and sequel novel set to hit shelves in August.
Mann’s new book was written in collaboration with author Meg Gardiner and in January, Mann confirmed to Deadline that the novel will tell Heat characters’ back stories while also exploring their lives after the events of the film.
He said: “It’s been my intention for a long time to do the further stories of Heat. There was always a rich history or back-story about the events in these people’s lives before 1995 in Heat and projection of where their lives would take them after.”
Heat 2 the novel will pick up exactly where the film left off, but also cover the six years preceding the events of Heat as well as the years that follow.
Mann’s three-hour masterpiece follows the consequences of an armed raid and is something of a love letter to LA.
Elsewhere during the Tribeca panel, Pacino was quick to gush about working with De Niro - who he’s shared the screen with four times - saying: “I’ve often said to people who have asked me about working with him, ‘You can do anything with Bob’.”
He went on: “No matter what you do, he’s going to hear it, react to it and connect to it. That’s a real luxury to be with someone like that. Because no matter what you do, he picks up on it. He’s always there, at the ready.”
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