New Regency Sues Michael Mann Over Rights to the Heat Screenplay

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

New Regency sued director Michael Mann in California federal court on Friday, asking a judge to declare that the company still owns the screenplay to the 1995 crime film Heat and that Mann's recent efforts to reclaim the copyright are invalid. The Yariv Milchan-run company argues that Mann wrote the screenplay as a work made for hire, a designation that, under U.S. copyright law, generally cannot be terminated by the writer. Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter all reported the filing.

Earlier this year, Mann's lawyers served termination notices invoking a Copyright Act provision that allows authors to reclaim rights they assigned after 35 years, Variety reported. The Hollywood Reporter, citing the complaint, said Mann served three notices seeking to reclaim the copyright to the screenplay and underlying materials. New Regency wants those notices declared void. "The Screenplay is not subject to termination," the complaint states, according to THR. Deadline quoted the company saying, "Regency still holds the rights to the Heat Screenplay."

The complaint, as quoted by Deadline, warns that if the notices took effect they would "purport to strip Regency, beginning in 2028, of rights it has held for more than three decades, clouding Regency's title to the Screenplay and jeopardizing its ability to develop, finance, and license works derived from it." Variety reported that, according to the lawsuit, Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the Heat screenplay in 1994 in a deal with Mann's loan-out company, and that New Regency says that deal was explicitly a work-made-for-hire agreement, not an assignment of rights that can be terminated.

Mann's representatives said they will fight the case. "We will vigorously defend this action and are confident that the courts will vindicate Michael Mann's statutory rights under the Copyright Act," a spokesperson said, in a statement carried by Deadline, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter. The spokesman added, "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." "After 40 years Michael Mann is exercising the right of authors to reclaim their work and in this case Michael Mann's original creation."

Central to Mann's position, as described in the coverage, is a claimed 1988 oral agreement between Mann and two of his loan-out companies, through which he says core rights were assigned to him as an independent author. New Regency disputes the validity of that arrangement. Variety, quoting the complaint, said the company was told the assignment had never been formally put in writing. The 1995 film, which Mann wrote, produced, and directed, starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

A separate film, Heat 2, is scheduled to begin shooting on Jan. 19, Mann's team said, and the lawsuit is not supposed to stop that production. "For clarification, this is unrelated to production of Heat 2 which will begin shooting on January 19," the spokesperson said. Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter both reported that agreements Mann and New Regency each made with Amazon regarding Heat 2 include provisions that depend on the outcome of the rights fight. Variety reported that Warner Bros. was originally set to produce Heat 2, later backed out, and that Amazon MGM Studios has since acquired the film. The trades did not agree in their descriptions of the Heat 2 cast, and this account does not treat any one published cast list as settled.

The case is a legal fight over who owns a famous screenplay, not a review of the movie and not a verdict. A court has not ruled. Other Hollywood rights and franchise news has moved quickly this week, including word that Steve Miner will direct a new Friday the 13th film planned for 2027. The Heat dispute, the trades said, now sits in federal court in California.

Opinion:

I am not going to pretend to know how a California judge will read a 1990s studio contract, or whether an oral agreement from 1988 will hold up on paper. That is what courts are for. The law that lets a writer reclaim work after 35 years was written for a reason: so that a studio's long possession of a story is not confused with a permanent deed to another man's labor. Mann says he is exercising that right. New Regency says there is no such right here because the script was work for hire. Let the record be examined in the open.

Until then, no one should treat a complaint as a win, or a press statement as a ruling. Heat 2 can be shot on the schedule the parties have announced. Ownership of the original is a different question, and it should be answered by the law, not by whoever files first.