Armie Hammer says he's no longer so enthusiastic about making a sequel to the Oscar-nominated film Call Me By Your Name.
Hammer told Vulture in a wide-ranging interview: “…the truth is, there have been really loose conversations about it, but at the end of the day — I'm sort of coming around to the idea that the first one was so special for everyone who made it, and so many people who watched it felt like it really touched them, or spoke to them. And it felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don't know that anything will match up to the first, you know?”
Hammer said he didn't know if director Luca Guadagnino or co-star Timothee Chalamet felt the same way, adding, “If we end up with an incredible script, and Timmy's in, and Luca's in, I'd be an asshole to say no. But at the same time, I'm like, That was such a special thing, why don't we just leave that alone?”
In December, Call Me By Your Name author André Aciman tweeted that he's writing a sequel to the beloved book ahead of a planned sequel to the critically-acclaimed film.
Tweeted Aciman: “I would actually love a sequel to Call Me by Your Name. In fact I am writing one.”
While talk of a screen sequel and a collaboration with Aciman has been going on for some time, the author's tweet was the first we'd heard of a sequel to the novel.
In a September interview with Marc Malkin for Variety, Call Me By Your Name actor Armie Hammer said that work on the film's sequel was continuing.
Said Hammer: “How much do I know and how much could I tell you are two very different things. I know a lot, but I can't tell you anything. More than anything I trust the artistic direction to Luca and [novelist] André Aciman and to those guys who did such a good job handling it the first time around. The only thing I want to see is I want to see it happen. I want to do it again…I miss the whole crew. It was such a special time. It was such a collaborative, unique, and totally immersive filming experience that I never really had, nor since. If we get to do another one, I'll feel really lucky.”
Back in March, director Luca Guadagnino said the sequel to Call Me By Your Name was underway, and that it would be a global adventure which would retain the original's two stars. But the script was not yet finished, and there has been much talk of what it might contain.
USA Today reported: ‘“I'm already conceiving the story with André Aciman, and it's gonna happen five or six years afterwards,” Guadagnino told reporter Carly Mallenbaum. “It's gonna be a new movie, a different tone.” The director also revealed the sequel will star Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet but will have a different backdrop. “They're gonna go around the world,” he said.'
Aciman's novel takes place in 1987 at the height of the AIDS crisis. Guadagnino told THR that he shifted the timeframe of the film back to 1983, close to the time that the HIV virus was discovered.
The sequel, Guadagnino said in October 2017, would make the AIDS crisis “a very relevant part of the story.”
Guadagnino told THR: ‘“I think Elio [Timothee Chalamet] will be a cinephile, and I'd like him to be in a movie theater watching Paul Vecchiali's Once More (a 1988 film about a man who falls in love with a man after he leaves his wife, which was the first French movie to deal with AIDS) That could be the first scene [in the sequel].”
To justify his idea of a Before Sunrise sort of film trilogy, Guadagnino cited the final 40 pages of Aciman's novel, which look ahead to the next 20 years in the lives of Elio and Oliver.
Added Guadagnino: “In my opinion, Call Me can be the first chapter of the chronicles of the life of these people that we met in this movie.”
Guadagnino expressed a similar sentiment in a separate interview: “I want to do a sequel because Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel – they are all gems. The texture we built together is very consistent. We created a place in which you believe in the world before them. They are young but they are growing up.”
At the time, Guadagnino said the sequel would be set seven years after the original story and explained that his ideal scenario would be for the second film to be made for a 2020 release. This would put Chalamet about the same age as his character, while Hammer would be just two years older (as opposed to five years older like in the first).
In the original book, Elio and Oliver meet up 15 years later in the United States with Oliver now married with a wife and children. Guadagnino said that unlike the book, Elio's character won't necessarily turn out to be gay: “I don't think Elio is necessarily going to become a gay man. He hasn't found his place yet. I can tell you that I believe that he would start an intense relationship with Marzia [Esther Garrel's character] again.”
It's unclear whether the novel Aciman is writing or the script Guadagnino is conceiving will follow any of these speculative plotlines.
