Cannibal Drama Bones and All is Not About Armie Hammer, Director Swears

Luca Guadagnino’s (Call Me By Your Name) latest directorial effort, Bones and All, recently dropped its official trailer. Starring Timothée Chalamet, the film is a romance thriller that follows the road-tripping exploits of a young cannibal. Despite the obvious comparisons to the scandals that have erupted around another CMBYN star, Guadagnino has insisted Bones and All has nothing to do with Armie Hammer.

In the last couple years, Hammer has been implicated in multiple sexual assault allegations, including an accusation of rape. Amidst these scandals, a series of sexts leaked in which the actor allegedly described fantasies involving blood and gore, saying he is “100 per cent a cannibal.”

The fact that Guadagnino’s next film will be themed around love and cannibalism struck many viewers as conspicuous. And the timing of the film’s release with the upcoming Discovery+ documentary House of Hammer seemed further proof. However, Guadagnino has clarified that Bones and All is in no way inspired by the allegations surrounding Hammer. For starters, the film is based on a 2015 book and has been in production nearly as long.

He told the press during the Zurich Film Festival, per Variety, “David Kajganich and Theresa Park, the writer and one of our producers, have been working on Bones and All since the book was released. Many years ago, probably around the time when we were shooting Call Me by Your Name.”

Guadagnino also pointed out that he was not even the first choice for director. “It was to be directed by my great colleague Antonio Campos, but he decided not to go for it. That’s when they gave me the script,” he said. “Any correlation with this kind of innuendo and silliness is preposterous.”

Of course, this begs the question: why did he want to make a cannibalistic romance? Guadagnino explained in a statement following the release of the trailer, “There is something about the disenfranchised, about people living on the margins of society, that I am drawn toward and touched by. I want to see where the possibilities lie for them, enmeshed within the impossibility they face. The movie is for me a meditation on who I am and how I can overcome what I feel, especially if it is something I cannot control in myself. And lastly, and most importantly, when will I be able to find myself in the gaze of the other?”

Bones and All will premiere in select theaters on November 18 and will release worldwide on Thanksgiving.