‘Separate Rooms’: Josh O’Connor To Reunite With Luca Guadagnino For His New Gay Romance Film

While on the rise beforehand, director Luca Guadagnino skyrocketed into the stratosphere and onto the international stage with his gay romantic drama, “Call Me By Your Name,” nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture. The filmmaker will return to similar territory with his next feature film, “Separate Rooms,” which has reunited him with British actor Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”). According to a report from Variety, O’Connor is now in talks to take a lead role in the Italian filmmaker’s next project. “Separate Rooms” is based on an eponymous novel by the late Italian writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli. 

O’Connor, who co-stars in Guadagnino’s upcoming sex tryst/tennis comedy “Challengers,” will play the role of an Italian writer mourning the loss of his boyfriend, whose passionate romance with a shy German musician is marked by different forms of separation.

READ MORE: Rooney Mara Says Luca Guadagnino Won’t Direct Aubrey Hepburn Biopic, But Project Not Dead

Here is the logline for the original 1989 novel via Amazon:

Leo is an Italian writer in his 30s. Thomas, his German lover, is dead. On a plane to Munich, Thomas’ hometown, Leo slips into a reverie of their meeting and life in Paris, nights in Thomas’ flat in Montmartre, and a desperate, drug-induced flight through the forests of northern France. Tondelli’s last book is a powerful novel about the strength of love and the trauma of death.

Guadagnino’s aforementioned next film, “Challengers,” features Zendaya as the woman at the center of a love triangle within the world of tennis, with Mike Faist and O’Connor playing the adjacent men. The film’s release was delayed last year due to the Hollywood strikes, and Amazon MGM Studios will distribute it on April 26. 

2024 may see two films from Guadagnino; “Challengers” in April and then “Queer,” his William Burroughs adaptation starring Daniel Craig. Shot last year, “Queer” is said to be ready-ish and could premiere during the fall film festival circuit in late August/early September (Venice feels like a good bet).

Guadagnino and O’Connor also worked together on a short film for Aston Martin, which you can see below alongside the trailer for “Challengers.”