New Regency Sues Michael Mann Over Rights to Heat Screenplay
New Regency has sued Michael Mann in federal court to stop the director from reclaiming the copyright to his screenplay for Heat, the 1995 crime classic starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The studio filed the complaint on Friday, November 13, 2026, in the US District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles.
The 20 page complaint asks a judge to declare that three termination notices Mann sent the company earlier this year are “defective and invalid,” and that New Regency still owns the script.
The timing is awkward. Mann is about two months away from shooting Heat 2, the long awaited follow up he’s making with Amazon MGM Studios.
What New Regency is claiming
US copyright law lets authors take back rights they signed away decades earlier, under Section 203 of the Copyright Act. There’s a major exception, though. A “work made for hire” belongs to the employer, and the writer can’t claw it back.
That exception is the core of New Regency’s case. The studio says Mann wrote Heat while employed by his own loan out company, the Michael Mann Company, which he set up in 1976. It points to a 1994 agreement with Warner Bros. that describes the screenplay as “material written by [Mann] for [MMCo.] as a work made for hire.” Mann signed it both for the company and personally, according to the filing.
New Regency acquired the rights to the script in 1994 and produced the film, which premiered on December 15, 1995.
Three notices and a 1988 “oral assignment”
According to the complaint, Mann served his first termination notice on April 29, 2026. It targeted an assignment he said he made around October 1, 1988, from himself to two companies he controlled.
When New Regency asked to see that agreement, it says Mann’s lawyer admitted it was never written down. The studio claims Mann said he had only recently “discovered” the deal after forgetting about it for nearly four decades.
The filing describes the arrangement as “an oral agreement that Mann allegedly made with himself, in which Mann, like a Shakespearean actor playing multiple parts, simultaneously spoke on his own individual behalf” and on behalf of his companies.
Mann followed up with a second notice on May 21 and a third on May 28. The third went after a written 1989 agreement covering “Hanna,” a teleplay that became the 1989 NBC TV movie L.A. Takedown, an early version of the Heat story. New Regency says that teleplay was also a work for hire.
If the notices hold up, New Regency says they would strip its rights beginning in 2028. The studio also argues the first two notices picked effective dates that come too early under the law.
What Michael Mann says
Mann’s camp pushed back quickly. “This filing has to do with original and personal writing Michael Mann did on multiple screenplays during the 1980s and which evolved into the iconic 1995 film Heat that Mann wrote, produced and directed,” a spokesperson said in a statement reported by The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets.
“After 40 years Michael Mann is exercising the right of authors to reclaim their work and in this case Michael Mann’s original creation,” the statement continued. “We will vigorously defend this action and are confident that the courts will vindicate Michael Mann’s statutory rights under the Copyright Act.”
Is Heat 2 in trouble?
Not according to either side. Mann’s spokesperson said the dispute “is unrelated to production of Heat 2 which will begin shooting on January 19.”
The complaint shows both parties planned for this fight. Mann signed a deal with Amazon around October 8, 2026, handing over any Heat 2 rights he might win back. New Regency signed its own deal with Amazon on October 16. Both agreements reference the disputed notices, so the movie is covered either way, as Variety noted.
Warner Bros. was originally set to make Heat 2 but walked away, and Amazon MGM picked it up. Mann is directing from his own script, based on the 2022 novel he wrote with Meg Gardiner, which works as both a prequel and a sequel to the original.
Deadline reports the cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Adam Driver, Stephen Graham and Jason Clarke. Bale is a familiar face for Mann, who directed him in 2009’s Public Enemies. If you want more on Bale’s career, our breakdown of Bale, Keaton and Affleck as Batman is a good place to start.
Why this case matters
Heat is one of the most influential crime movies ever made. The Pacino and De Niro coffee shop scene and the downtown Los Angeles shootout still get studied and copied 30 years later. Whoever controls the screenplay controls future remakes, series and spinoffs built on it.
It could matter well beyond one movie, too. A lot of veteran screenwriters worked through loan out companies, and a ruling on whether those arrangements block termination rights could reach other classic films.
For now, it’s a request for a court declaration, not a fight over money. A judge hasn’t ruled on anything, and no hearing date has been made public. Celebrity court battles can drag on for years, as fans of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard case know well. We’ll update this story as the case moves forward and as Heat 2 heads into production.
Photo: Michael Mann at BFI Southbank, London, December 3, 2023, by Raph_PH, cropped, licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.