"Call Me By Your Name" Director Says Sequel Is In The Works

Timothée Chalamet (L) and Armie Hammer (R) in Call Me By Your Name

USA Today is reporting that Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino is already planning the film's sequel.

"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.

In January, Guadagnino told The Hollywood Reporter the sequel would also find the AIDS epidemic central to the new storyline.

The disease, however, will be tackled head-on in the sequel, says Guadagnino, who hopes the awards contender is the first installment of a decades-long Before Sunrise-like series. "I think it's going to be a very relevant part of the story," he told THR at Jan. 13's Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.

"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," said Guadagnino, "could be the first scene [in the sequel]."

"The novel has 40 pages at the end that goes through the next 20 years of the lives of Elio and Oliver, so there is some sort of indication through the intention of author Andre Aciman that the story can continue," Guadagnino added.

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes you find lightning in a bottle. My take on CMBYN is that the delicate, thoughtful exploration of first love made the film so charming.

Two words: Grease 2.