Michael Mann wrote, produced, and directed the 1995 crime classic Heat — but New Regency wants a federal judge to tell him he doesn't own it. The Yariv Milchan-run studio filed suit Friday in California federal court to block Mann from reclaiming the screenplay copyright under the termination provision of the Copyright Act, arguing his work was merely "work for hire." If the court agrees, one of the most iconic films in American cinema stays corporate property in perpetuity — and the man who made it has no claim.
The stakes are straightforward. Congress built copyright termination into the law so creators could claw back their work after 35 years — a rare check on corporate control of culture. New Regency's argument is that Mann was just an employee when he wrote the screenplay, so the company, not the artist, is the legal author. If that sounds like a raw deal for the person who actually did the creating, that's because it is.
Mann served three termination notices on New Regency earlier this year. According to The Hollywood Reporter's account of the complaint, the first notice sought to terminate all copyright grants for Heat, including an alleged 1988 oral agreement between Mann and two of his own loan-out companies that he says assigned him core rights as an independent author. Mann reportedly told New Regency the assignment had never been formally written down and that he only recently discovered the arrangement. New Regency says that doesn't matter — if the screenplay was work for hire, termination rights don't exist.
Mann's team isn't backing down. "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. "After 40 years, Michael Mann is exercising the right of authors to reclaim their work and, in this case, Michael Mann's original creation."
New Regency's lawyers at Kendall Brill & Kelly see it differently — and they're thinking about money, not legacy. "If given effect, the Termination Notices 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," the 20-page complaint states. Both outlets report that the lawsuit also reveals certain provisions of the agreements Mann and New Regency each signed with Amazon for Heat 2 depend on the outcome of this litigation. So it's not just the 1995 film at issue — it's the sequel, too. Deadline notes that Heat 2 begins shooting January 19 with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and the late Val Kilmer, based on Mann's 2022 novel.
Deadline identified Yariv Milchan as the executive running New Regency; The Hollywood Reporter omitted that detail. Both outlets noted the Amazon entanglement. Neither pressed hard on the underlying question: why should a corporation that didn't write a single word of the screenplay hold it forever while the man who wrote it has to beg a court for the rights Congress already gave him?
The "work for hire" doctrine is the favorite escape hatch for every studio trying to keep creative property away from creators. If New Regency wins, the message to every writer and director in Hollywood is clear: your work is never really yours. Mann says he'll "vigorously defend this action." The courts will decide whether the Copyright Act means what it says — or whether corporate ownership of American culture is permanent and untouchable.
