Michael Mann has revealed that Scott Cooper will direct his Western project Comanche, inspired by the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman who was kidnapped by Comanches as a child and later lived as a Comanche woman.
He was replying to a question on two long-gestated Westerns he has been planning to make for some time.
“I want to do a Western. I have two screenplays, one of which I’m not going to do, I’m going to produce and Scott Cooper is going to do… it’s called Comanche,” Mann told a masterclass at the Lumière Festival in Lyon on Friday.
Mann wrote the project in the early 2000s with Eric Roth but it has never gotten off the ground.
Actor and director Cooper is currently gearing up for release of his Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as the rock star.
Mann also gave an update on his plans for Heat 2, saying negotiations were ongoing and that he hoped to shoot the film in 2026.
Earlier this month, Deadline revealed that the sequel to Mann’s iconic crime drama Heat, had moved to Amazon MGM Studios division United Artists, after years of development at Warner Bros.
Sources also told Deadline that Leonardo DiCaprio is in early talks to star in the role of Chris Shiherlis, the character played by Val Kilmer in the 1995 original.
Mann is in Lyon as its honorary guest of the heritage-focused Lumière Festival.
The event is spearheaded by Cannes delegate general Thierry Frémaux, in his other role as head of the Institut Lumière, who posed the question asking for an update on the status of Mann’s Western projects.
In a wide-ranging masterclass, Mann touched on a number of his works, which are screening at the festival as part of the tribute, including The Jericho Mile (1979), Thief (1981), The Keep (1983), Manhunter (1986), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), Ali (2001) and Collateral (2004).
The director will be feted with the Lumière Award in front of a 3,000-strong crowd at the festival on Friday evening, following in the footsteps of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton and Isabelle Huppert.