Call Me By Your Name 2 is as good as dead, director says
Call Me By Your Name. (Twitter/Sony)
Dreams for the long-awaited sequel to Call Me By Your Name may have been squashed as director Luca Guadagnino has distanced himself from the movie.
In an interview with Deadline, Guadagnino said he has sidelined the project, which comes in the wake of rumbling allegations of cannibalism against star Armie Hammer. The outlet described him as having “moved on” from the film.
“The truth of the matter is, my heart is still there,” the Italian filmmaker, 49, said.
“But I’m working on this movie now, and I’m hopefully going to do Scarface soon, and I have many projects and so will focus on this side of the Atlantic and the movies I want to make.”
And with Guadagnino now juggling his Scarface adaptation alongside Bones and All, which will see him reunite with Call Me By Your Name star Timothée Chalamet, it seems that the sequel has been kicked into the long grass.
James Ivory, who won an Oscar for adapting André Ascian’s novel of the same name for the screen, has also withdrawn from the sequel. Saying in 2018 to The Film Stage that he “wouldn’t be involved” in the film.
Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet. (Getty)
Guadagnino did have plans to attach another writer to Call Me By Your Name‘s sequel. But as he explained to Italian outlet Gay It!, the coronavirus threw a wrench into this plan.
Doubts had long riddled the possibility of a Call Me By Your Name, even as Guadagnino said the entire original cast would be committed to returning for it.
Hammer teased in 2020 that the film would be more of Guadagnino’s own creation than a faithful adaptation of Ascian’s sequel, Find Me.
But even then, Hammer made it clear that the project was very much in its early days.
“I’ve been talking to Luca [Guadagnino], but we haven’t got into it,” Hammer told GQ Magazine.
“I haven’t even read the book. I know Luca hasn’t got a full script yet, although he knows what he wants to do with the story, so I don’t know how similar or dissimilar it will be to Find Me the novel.”
Further fears were fanned of the film never coming to light after Hammer fielded allegations of emotional and sexual abuse – claims he has emphatically denied.
But Michael Stuhlbarg, who played Elio’s supportive father Sami, remains hopeful that the scandals will “blow through“.
“Luca [Guadagnino] has a whole array of projects in front of him,” he told The Independent last year.
“I imagine they’re going to take their time, but I do hope it happens.”
