Film About Historical Rise of Two Outfit Bosses Slated by Michael Mann

Tony Accardo, aka "Joe Batters", was nicknamed by Al Capone
for his skill at pummeling people.

On September 7, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, who were famously paired in the Michael Mann film Heat, will be reunited, with Mann, for a panel discussion to be hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Beverly Hills' Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.





The discussion will follow a viewing of a new digital restoration of the 1995 film.

As was reported earlier this year, Heat is due for a prequel by Mann. The acclaimed filmmaker has also stated that he'd approved a true-crime novelization for his new publishing label, Michael Mann Books, to detail the story of Chicago Outfit bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana. For the book, the debut project for Mann's imprint, the director has teamed up with Don Winslow, the bestselling author of The Cartel "to co-create an original novel about the complex relationship between two Organized Crime giants," as Deadline reported, further noting that "the project will be developed into a feature film that Mann will produce and possibly direct, based on the novel and a pre-existing screenplay Mann co-wrote with Shane Salerno."

Heat is Mann's widely lauded big-screen depiction of the rise and fall of a fictional crew of bank robbers and the high-powered detective who hunts them. 

The Heat prequel also will be published as a book under Mann's new label, then shot as a film. As for the content of the prequel, it supposedly will focus on the formative years of Heat's major characters, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), Chris Shihirles (Val Kilmer), and Nate (Jon Voight).

Though the story is fictional, Mann is known for seeding some of his crime films with details from true stories of criminals and lawmen. Mann’s inspiration for Heat was the stories told to him by his friend, Chicago Detective Charlie Adamson, who killed the real-life version of Neil McCauley in a 1963 shootout.

An earlier Mann classic, Thief, starring James Caan, about a professional safe-cracker who unknowingly allows the mob to get its hooks into him, also had a real-life basis. Thief was based on the book The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar, published by the author under the pen name Frank Hohimer. Hohimer's real name was John Allen Seybold (June 12, 1923 – February 2, 2005), an American jewel thief who had ties to former Outfit underboss Felix Anthony "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio.

Seybold served as the film's technical adviser on the Chicago set (while the FBI still had outstanding warrants for his arrest). He was eventually imprisoned at South Woods State Prison in New Jersey from May 21, 1995 to November 2, 2001.

Heat tells the fast-paced story of the rise and fall
of a crew of bank burglars.

Mann is slated to produce and direct a film adaptation of the Accardo/Giancana book, which is listed on IMDB.com as "Untitled Tony Accardo/Sam Giancana Biopic" under the genres of biography, crime, drama.

As Vanity Fair reported:

"Keeping in line with Mann’s John Dillinger biopic Public Enemies, adapted from a book of the same name by V.F. special correspondent Bryan Burrough, the proposed film would combine Mann’s flair for criminal period pieces with intensive character work: the two mens' egos and insecurities collide in a volatile milieu where lives can be taken in a heartbeat."


"Joe Batters" — nicknamed by Al Capone for his skill at pummeling people with blunt objects — aka Anthony J. Accardo died at 86 in 1992.

With nothing more than a 6th grade education, he rose from working as a bodyguard for Al Capone to the position of reputed boss of the Chicago Outfit.

At a U.S. Senate Rackets Committee hearing he was called the "godfather of Chicago organized crime . . . a legend in his own time, the heir to Al Capone."

Once Capone was put away for not paying his taxes, Accardo "then seized power little by little until fully taking over as boss in 1943, a position he held with an iron fist until ceding it to his part-protege, part-competitor (Sam) Giancana in 1957."