‘Call Me By Your Name’ Could Have More Than One Sequel

Director Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, Call Me By Your Name left its two protagonists in different countries and on separate paths. However, shortly after the film had made its award season rounds, there were already talks of a sequel that would see Elio and Oliver, played by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer respectively, reuniting some time after the events of the film.

Referencing the last few pages of the André Aciman novel that the acclaimed film is based on, in which the pair meet up some fifteen years later, Guadagnino told USA Today during a red carpet interview back in March that the sequel will take place five or six years later, setting the story in the late ’80s or early ’90s.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the director has confirmed he intends on bringing back the majority of the film’s supporting characters. Armie Hammer revealed that he’s seen a rough draft of the script, expressing excitement for the project. Concerning a finished screenplay however, the original film’s writer, James Ivory, might not be involved. In February, he told Gay Times, “No one has contacted me. You have to think, ‘What does André Aciman think about that?’ It’s his creation. No one seems to know how he feels about it.”

It looks like this sequel might be truly a labor of love for Luca Guadagnino, and he could very well pen the story himself. As far as the future of Elio and Oliver’s story, he sees a further continuation of it with up to five films total. Having already envisioned one sequel, the possibility of others came to him upon the film’s premiere at Sundance. He told Vulture, “I didn’t completely realize until then that they were characters who could go beyond the boundaries of the film.”

Regarding the first sequel of potentially many, Guadagnino has talked a lot about (possible) storylines and historical events that might surround Elio and Olver’s reunion. He’s expressed interest in seeing Elio and Oliver travel the world together, lending an opportunity for more beautiful scenery, and he’s also alluded to a 1990 setting that would address “the Berlusconi era in Italy and it would mean dealing with the war of Iraq.”

Further details have been provided regarding the main characters and what places in their lives they’ll be in when they next encounter each other. In the 2007 novel, more specifically in the last 40 pages not depicted in the film adaptation, Oliver is married, with children. While the director has not confirmed that the sequel will strictly follow the events of the book’s final pages, a lot of what he’s said hints at a similar take.

One sequel for films like Call Me By Your Name are rare, let alone multiple, but crazier things have happened. It worked for the Before Sunrise trilogy after all, so there’s hope. Call Me By Your Name might just be the gayest saga of film history. That being said, one aspect of the story that will hopefully be revised, or perhaps just be handled with extra care, is that of Elio, who might be seen in “an intense relationship” with Marzia (played by Esther Garrel) once again, as according to Guadagnino’s perspective, “I don’t think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn’t found his place yet.”

Not that fluidity isn’t fine and great, but a flash forward will allow for an adult Elio to address his attraction to men in less of a gray area. While the age difference wasn’t necessarily made an issue in the film, a 20-something-year-old man hooking up with a teenager is bordering on predator behavior, no matter how charming the film is, and having Elio’s only male lover be a grown man he met one summer as a kid may be a mistake.

A hopefully very gay sequel to Call Me By Your Name is expected in theaters by 2020.