The Oscars have long since come and gone, but filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” is still making headlines. The film, which captured three Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, is still getting premiered all around the world, and the director has been very vocal about wanting a sequel. While it’s causing a bit of a controversy in Beijing, actor Armie Hammer was recently interviewed about the status of the sequel.
It’s definitely no secret that a sequel to “Call Me By Your Name” is in the works, but no one really knows when the production might happen. “It will be a few years, intentionally, like the [Richard] Linklater thing,” Hammer said in an interview with Collider. He’s, of course, referencing Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which is famous for taking 12 years to shoot, while the lead actor aged and was able to play the same character through multiple periods of his life.
Of course, a sequel to “Call Me By Your Name” wasn’t always in the works. When asked whether or not Hammer knew about a possible sequel during filming, the actor said, “No. I knew that, in the book, the story goes on for several more years than what we got in the movie, but when I signed on for this, it wasn’t like, ‘We’re gonna do another one.’ No one has signed contracts. We don’t have a studio. There’s not even a script. The book jumps forward several years, and you see when Oliver is a professor and Elio is a piano player. I think people really responded well to the movie and the way Luca directed it. They obviously really responded well to [Timothée Chalamet]. So, if they want another one, that’s a huge compliment.”
So, with no contracts, no script, no studio, and nothing other than the hopes of Guadagnino, does Hammer believe that the sequel could actually happen?
“It could very well happen, yeah,” he said.
Even if a sequel does happen, one thing we know is that it probably won’t get played in Beijing. According to a recent report, “Call Me By Your Name” was pulled from the Beijing Film Festival by the event’s organizers. This comes as the Chinese authorities gain more oversight over films, news, and publishing. While being gay is not actually illegal, the film is being targeted due to its subject matter, as homosexuality is disapproved of by large parts of Chinese society and government.