Following all the much deserved awards season hype – including major Academy Awards nominations – the sequel for Call Me By Your Name is looking ever more likely.
Director Luca Guadagnino has suggested he’s got ideas for more than one sequel too, with hopes to set up a shared cinematic universe to follow the lives of Elio and Oliver after that fateful Italian summer in 1983.
Part of the story will definitely involve the AIDS epidemic which tore through the gay community during the 1980s – something that was absent from the Call Me By Your Name novel and film.
“I think it’s going to be a very relevant part of the story,” Guadagnino told The Hollywood Reporter.
“I think Elio will be a cinephile, and I’d like him to be in a movie theatre watching Paul Vecchiali’s Once More. That could be the first scene [in the sequel].”
Once More was the first French film to address the AIDS crisis when it was released in 1988.
Related: Here’s why all your criticisms of Call Me By Your Name are wrong
As for plans for more than one sequel, Guadagnino touched upon Andre Aciman’s final part of the book which travels through time meeting up with the two characters during different stages of their lives.
“Call Me can be the first chapter,” he explained.
“If the first one is a story of coming of age and becoming a young man, maybe the next chapter will be, what is the position of the young man in the world, what does he want – and what is left a few years later of such an emotional punch that made him who he is?”
Guadagnino initially teased us with a sequel last year when he told Gay Times: “Maybe in time we’ll be able to tell more stories about these people.”
When asked if he’s spoken to the author about a sequel, he added: “I’ve spoken to André about that and, yeah, André is up for it.”
Bring it on!
Related: Armie Hammer defends age gap criticism aimed at Call Me By Your Name
Latest
