Six films Queer director Luca Guadagnino is currently working on – including American Psycho
Luca Guadagnino has an array of exciting upcoming film projects. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty)
Luca Guadagnino will simply not put down the camera! The hard-working Challengers director has a number of exciting films in the works, including an adaptation of American Psycho.
The 53-year-old prolific Italian filmmaker, previously best known for Call Me By Your Name, has been on a roll since Challengers. The release of Queer – Guadagnino’s heady adaptation of William S. Burroughs‘ story starring Daniel Craig – is just around the corner and will be followed by After the Hunt and his newly announced American Psycho adaptation.
Here are all the upcoming Guadagnino projects and what we know about them so far:
After the Hunt
Guadagnino has put together another star-studded cast for After the Hunt.
To date, the cast includes: Pretty Woman’s Julia Roberts, it also stars Spider-Man‘s Andrew Garfield and The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri.
Lizzie’s Chloë Sevigny also joins the thriller, working with the director for the third time after the bloodthirsty cannibal romance Bones & All and HBO series We Are Who We Are.
Michael Stuhlbarg, who played the devastatingly wise father of Timothée Chalamet’s protagonist in Call Me By Your Name, is reuniting with Guadagnino in this film.
Mutt’s Lio Mehiel, Legion’s Ariyan Kassam and Will Price were also present in the table read.
The film is set to be an intensely dramatic thriller that revolves around a college professor (Roberts) who is thrown into turmoil when she’s drawn into an investigation when a student accuses her colleague of misconduct.
Simultaneously, a dark secret from the professor’s past emerges and threatens to come to light.
After the Hunt is penned by Nora Garrett. Brian Grazer and Allan Mandelbaum are producing the film, with Karen Lunder as executive producer alongside Garrett.
It seems After the Hunt recently wrapped production, so we’re waiting with bated breath for any fresh news.
American Psycho
Guadagnino has recently announced that he will direct a new interpretation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho and bring it to the screen.
The novel was adapted into a film starring Christian Bale in 2000 and later into a stage musical starring Doctor Who star Matt Smith.
With the news of a new American Psycho adaptation, many are pondering who will be cast in the iconic role of investment banker and serial killer Patrick Bateman.
At the Academy Museum Gala, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ breakout gay star Cooper Koch told The Hollywood Reporter he wants the role.
Koch said: “Luca’s doing American Psycho, so I think I can do Patrick Bateman.
“I haven’t played a serial killer yet so I think I could do it.”
Ellis’s 1991 horror novel is told in first-person and charts the double life of Bateman as he goes from a narcissistic banker to a violent murderer.
The novel garnered notoriety for its graphic violence as the book more widely is considered to be a critique of the viciousness of capitalism and a satire of fragile masculinity.
Scotty Bowers biopic
Guadagnino has also been linked to making a biographical film about Scotty Bowers, a Hollywood hustler who was known for procuring male sex workers for closeted gay and bisexual film stars.
Bowers worked as a date-arranger for Hollywood stars from the 1940s to the 1980s.
In 2020, Searchlight Pictures acquired the rights to the documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood and was developing a feature film based on Bowers’ life.
Guadagnino was brought on to direct the film, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as writers.
Bowers’ 2012 memoir Full Service revealed much of his work, a lot of which he had not discussed before. He chose to open up about what happened as most of the people involved had since died.
Bowers passed away in 2019, at the age of 96.
Lord of the Flies
Guadagnino is at the helm of a new adaption of Lord of the Flies – his remake will revisit William Golding’s legendary 1953 novel.
The plot follows a collective of boys stranded on an isolated island and left to fend for themselves. As the boys try to govern themselves they descend into feral chaos as their humanity seems to dissolve.
The adaptation will be scripted by gay British writer Patrick Ness, the author best known for his young adult novels A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy.
It was previously announced that the remake would subvert the gender roles of the original by casting adolescent girls rather than choir boys.
However, Ness came on board and the project returned to its all-male ensemble, following in the footsteps of the two existing adaptations from 1963 and 1990.
Anderson Beer, who will serve as a producer on the remake, previously told Collider that the director is leaning into the plot’s psychological horror element and offering a more current take on the story.
“I think some people have tried to tackle that property in a way that doesn’t really resonate to now, and I think that the whole approach has been very fresh and refreshing,” Beer noted.
It’s certainly an exciting premise following Guadagnino’s wondrous work on the Suspiria remake, revamping Dario Argento’s 1977 Italian supernatural classic.
Separate Rooms
A film adaptation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s 1989 novel, Separate Rooms (Camere Separate), is currently also on Guadagnino’s jam-packed plate.
A few days after Guadagnino announced his attachment to the project Josh O’Connor and Léa Seydoux were also reported as potential stars of the film.
Camere Separate charts the tumultuous relationship of famous writer Leo and young German musician Thomas.
Leo and Thomas live separately but manage their relationship via letter, using their writing to maintain their solitude which Leo treasures.
However, when Thomas starts an affair with a woman and develops an illness, Leo sets off to be by his side. Leo is left to reconnect with his former lover and come to terms with his sense of separation and individualism.
Separate Rooms was Tondelli’s last novel and is a moving portrait of the power of love in the face of death.
Buddenbrooks
Another book that Guadagnino is set to adapt is Thomas Mann’s 1901 novel, Buddenbrooks.
Guadagnino has remarked that his Buddenbrooks re-telling will be a companion piece to Queer. He will be adapting the project with co-writer Francesca Manieri.
Buddenbrooks, Mann’s first novel, chronicles a wealthy German merchant family over four generations. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu.
Guadagnino told IndieWire that there were two books that he grew up with, Queer and Buddenbrooks.
“I think they are kind of mirroring each other, or they are the flip coin of each other,” Guadagnino said.
“One [Queer] is about the longing of the past and the unavoidability when you meet someone that is really pulling you in, and you want to see yourself reflected in the gaze of the other.
“And the other one [Buddenbrooks] is about the decadence of a Western society rooted in the most brutal form of repression, internal before being external.
“To understand the obscenity of repression being acted out upon people, I think you have to see and look into the repression that the people who are exerting repression over other people have within themselves, not to justify them, but to go to the root of this heart of darkness.”
Guadagnino cited Buddenbrooks, Suspiria, Queer and Separate Rooms as his four lifelong passion projects. With two completed and the other two currently in the works, Guadagnino is certainly a cinematic force to be reckoned with.
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