New Regency Sues Michael Mann Over Rights to the Heat Screenplay

New Regency has sued filmmaker Michael Mann in a California federal court, asking a judge to confirm that the studio still owns the screenplay for Heat. The case, reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 14 November 2026, puts a 1995 crime film's script at the centre of a fight over who controls it.

Mann had moved to take the rights back. He served three notices on New Regency seeking to reclaim the copyright to the Heat screenplay and the materials that sit underneath it. Copyright is the legal right to control a work, including who may copy it, adapt it or make money from it.

The notices were made under a US rule that lets creators take back rights they once handed over, but only after a set number of years. Studios often object when that happens, because the rights may be central to films they have already made or plan to make. New Regency's answer is that the rule does not apply here. The studio argues the Heat screenplay was written as a "work made for hire", a legal term for a script created by an employee or commissioned under terms that make the company, not the writer, the owner from the start. Works of that kind are generally not subject to the take-back rule.

The lawsuit asks the court for a clear ruling that New Regency keeps its rights to the screenplay. A judge has not ruled on it.

The timing matters because of another project. Heat 2, a film currently in development, is based on Mann's 2022 novel of the same name. The book works as both a prequel and a sequel to the 1995 film, which starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and followed a detective and a veteran thief in Los Angeles. Whoever controls the Heat screenplay may have a say over how that story connects to the original.

For readers who follow films, the case is a reminder that a movie's story rarely belongs to one person for good. Scripts, novels and characters can change hands, and the paperwork signed decades earlier can decide who gets to use them. Those contracts are rarely in the public eye until a dispute like this one brings them out.

The complaint was filed in federal court in California, where the studio and the filmmaker will now make their cases. Further filings and any response from Mann's side will show how the dispute develops.