Michael Mann addressed his move from Warner Bros. to Amazon MGM Studio division United Artist with his long gestated upcoming feature Heat 2 at a press conference on Saturday at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, where he is being feted with its honorary Lumière Award this year.

The director was asked if the deal with the steaming giant could compromise the film’s theatrical release in the same way as Ferrari, which bypassed cinemas in a number of key European territories such as France and Europe.

Mann said he expected Heat 2 to get a U.S. theatrical release on 4,000 cinemas for at least 45 days, and added he felt the streamer was entering a new era with regards to exhibition and distribution.

“Amazon is in transition, which is why they bought Bond. They’re in a transition to become something more than a streaming service. They have ambitions be a major, I don’t want to speak for Amazon, a major figure in exhibition, in theatrical.”

“The potential, because the movie would come out in almost two years from now, the potential of the synergy within Amazon is massive,” he added.

He said the move to United Artists with Heat 2 had been due mainly to the high cost of making the movie, linked partly to the fact it is shooting in multiple territories.

“Heat 2 is… an expensive movie to make, but I believe it should be made at the proper size and scale. It’s going to shoot in Chicago, Los Angeles, Paraguay, and possibly some parts in Singapore,” he said.

“It’s complex. People make dramas at a certain budget level… because of the costs, Heat 2 is probably double that. So, if it was at a low, low price, I could have made it anywhere. But it’s complex. I can’t get into all the politics of it, but we moved from Warner Brothers to Amazon and United Artists.”

Earlier in the conference, Mann was asked (by Deadline) about his opinion on AI and whether he had or planned to use the technology, given his reputation for being at the cutting edge of using new technological advances in his work throughout his career.

He said he had not used the technology as yet but was mulling the use of AI in Heat 2 to support the aging and de-aging process of the characters of Detective Vincent Hanna, Neil McCauley and Chris Shiherlis, with the film revisiting their stories prior to the original’s 1995 setting.

“I don’t experiment with technology gratuitously. [If] I have a dramatic need or aesthetic need for it then I go deep into what I need,” he said. “For example, aging and de-aging will be very important in the film (Heat 2),” he said.

Asked why he was so keen to revisit the characters of Heat, when he had never done sequels in the past, Mann revealed it was due partly to his deep connection with the characters.

“The characters of Heat are so alive to me that I know everything about outside the boundaries of the film. I know what De Niro’s character looked like when he was basically state raised as an 11-year-old, wearing clothes that didn’t match, being ostracized, which then made them aggressive and violent, which led to juvenile facilities,” said the director.

“I know everything about these characters. I always wanted to do more with these people, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it because one’s dead at the end of Heat,” he said.

“Then the idea occurred to me based on the rapport between the two lethal adversaries, Pacino’s Hanna and De Niro’s Macaulay about how to do both before the events of Heat and after.”

Mann said Heat 2 would not deal with the events of 1995 in the original movie but would start rather one day after, with only Hanna’s associate Chris Shiherlis, played by Val Kilmer still alive.

“Only Val Kilmer is alive, and he has to flee United States and then it goes seven years earlier. It’s 1988. Hanna is a detective in Chicago, not Los Angeles… In 1988, they are not the same people as they are in 1995. It’s the events of 1988 which then turned them into the characters of 1995.”

“For example, Macaulay, De Niro, who has an idea of no attachment, having nothing in your life that you can’t walk up from in 30 seconds flat. 1988 he has a wife, he has a stepdaughter. He has a nuclear family that is very attached to him.”