While Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guagadnino and star Timothée Chalamet are set to reunite, a sequel the beloved 2017 indie drama will not be the project that brings them back together. That’s because, according to Guagadnino, a follow-up is likely DOA following the sexual assault allegations against co-star Armie Hammer.
Guagadnino did not reference Hammer by name in a recent interview with Deadline, but confirmed he has moved on the project. He spoke to the entertainment news site from the set of Bones and All, an adaptation of the Camille DeAngelis novel that will serve as a reunion between Chalamet and his CMBYN father, Michael Stuhlbarg. The film, which is currently shooting in Cincinnati, marks the Italian director’s first to be shot in the United States, and Guagadnino said he aims to “focus on this side of the Atlantic.”
“I’ve been totally influenced by the American culture, American cinema and now, American landscape, so I’m very happy and proud that I’ve finally come to this shore,” he said. “The last few months have been amazing for me, getting to know this part of the country, which is beautiful and unseen.”
While Guadagnino admitted that his “heart is still there” with Elio and Oliver, he suggested that his schedule wouldn’t allow a return trip to Italy. “I’m working on this movie now,” he said, “and I’m hopefully going to do Scarface soon.”
The 49-year-old gay auteur is, indeed, a very busy man these days. In 2018, Guadagnino released a radical envisioning of Dario Argento’s giallo classic, Suspiria, which was followed by We Are Who We Are, a characteristically languid coming-of-age drama he created for HBO. Guadagnino directed and co-wrote all 8 episodes in the show’s first season, and a second appears to be on pause for the moment, although the network has yet to rule it out.
In the interim, Guadagnino is working on a new spin of the oft-adapted Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited with a top-shelf cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, and Andrew Garfield. (The mini-series will, in quite the queer worlds colliding, mark the second reteaming of Blanchett and Mara since Carol, following Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley.)
But even for those with a rooting interest in making sure Guadagnino’s IMDb page stays full, the fate of the Call Me By Your Name sequel is a perhaps expected disappointment. While the director had expressed interest in adapting Andre Aciman’s recently released Find Me, which sees Elio and Oliver reuniting as adults, and reportedly found a new screenwriter after CMBYN scribe James Ivory passed on the idea, a sequel became increasingly untenable as the many allegations against Hammer came to light.
Earlier this year, several women came forward to accuse the actor of “emotional abuse, manipulation, and coercion,” as Variety reports. While DMs indicating fetishes surrounding cannibalism attracted the lion’s share of attention on social media, claims include repeatedly violating boundaries, ignoring consent, and carving his initials into a sexual partner’s skin, on one occasion.
In March, one of the reported survivors — known simply by her first name, Effie — filed sexual assault charges against Hammer in Los Angeles. The investigation remains ongoing, according to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Following the detailed claims, Hammer was swiftly dropped by his agency and publicist. After pulling out of the romantic comedy Shotgun Wedding and the Watergate scandal drama Gaslit, which co-starred Jennifer Lopez and Julia Roberts, respectively, he was soon yanked from every upcoming project on his schedule. These included the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Godfather, and the film Billion Dollar Spy, a Cold War thriller co-starring Mads Mikkelsen.
The 34-year-old actor still has a handful of films set for release, which were shot prior to the allegations becoming public: the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile and the Taika Waititi-directed Next Goal Wins.
Hammer has continued to maintain his innocence, calling the reports “bullshit” and “patently untrue.” He has claimed that all sexual interactions with the accusers were “completely consensual in that they were fully discussed, agreed upon, and mutually participatory.”
While this conclusion undoubtedly isn’t the one Guadagnino or the film’s fans wanted for Elio and Oliver’s onscreen romance, we’ll always have that one perfect summer.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
