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PHOTOS: Your first look at the fall’s hottest gay movies starring Jacob Elordi, Paul Mescal & more

By · Updated on January 26, 2024
Image Credits: ‘Saltburn,’ MGM (left & right) | ‘All of Us Strangers,’ Searchlight Pictures (center)

We may be living in a post-“Barbenheimer” world, but there’s still plenty to look forward to in theaters for the remainder of 2023. (Though we can’t imagine anything will reach the blockbuster success of Barbie, which has now made over a billion dollars at the global box office!)

The fall, in particular, is a time when studios will premiere some of their most anticipated, prestigious fare—the movies likely to make a splash in awards season—and, this morning, we got our first glimpses at two films we imagine you’ll be hearing quite a bit about in the months ahead.

And, better yet? They both star some of the hottest talent working today, they both come from exciting filmmakers, and they both sound like they’ll be pretty damn gay. What more could you want?

Let’s take a closer look…

Is Saltburn the next The Talented Mr. Ripley?

Image Credit: ‘Saltburn,’ MGM

First up is Saltburn, a “beautifully wicked tale of privilege and desire” from Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell, headed to theaters on November 24 after a world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

Now, we’ve been keeping tabs on this one for a minute thanks to its scorching hot cast. In the lead is the beguiling Barry Keoghan—fresh off his first Oscar nomination for The Banshees Of Inisherin—playing Oxford University student Oliver Quick, who gets “drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton,” played by Euphoria hunk Jacob Elordi. 

Things take a turn once Felix invites his new friend to his eccentric family sprawling estate, Saltburn, where it’s said he’ll have a summer “never to be forgotten.”

Related:

It’s about to get homoerotic for these two in their new ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’-esque thriller

Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi star in ‘Saltburn’ which early reports say will feature “a lot of nudity and explicit scenes.”

And the hype is real. After some enthusiastic test screenings, word got out that the film was “similar in tone” to The Talented Mr. Ripley, which—considering that’s one of the best and movies of the ’90s—is a very good thing. Will Keoghan and Elordi have a charged and homoerotic relationship, similar to Matt Damon and Jude Law in Ripley? We sure hope so!

And we thought you might also like to know: Advanced buzz is that there’s going to “a lot of nudity and explicit scenes” in Saltburn, so…. gird your loins.

Image Credit: ‘Saltburn,’ MGM

Brand-new first look images provide lush and stunning vistas of the Saltburn estate, loaded with details worth zooming in on. Most notably, the rippling musculature of Keoghan’s upper back takes center stage, and already we’re getting a sense of how steamy this whole thing’s going to be.

Written and directed by Fennell, Saltburn also stars Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Richard E. Grant (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie), Archie Madekwe (Midsommar), and Alison Oliver (Conversations With Friends).

Is All Of Us Strangers a gay ghost story?

Then, a month later (hopefully you’ll have had enough time to recover from Saltburn), comes a fantastical drama called All Of Us Strangers, the latest from revered gay filmmaker Andrew Haigh—best known in queer circles as the man behind sizzling romance Weekend and many of your favorite Looking episodes (and Looking: The Movie).

Adapted from the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, the film tells the story of a London screenwriter named Adam (openly gay actor Adam Scott, perhaps bets known as Fleabag‘s “hot priest”) who is stuck in a rut.

Related:

‘Looking’ and ‘Weekend” director Andrew Haigh: Making a queer “superhero movie would be lovely.”

One day, he happens upon his childhood home where it appears his long-dead parents (played by Billy Elliot‘s Jamie Bell and The Crown‘s Claire Foy) still reside, looking as young as they did when they passed 30 years prior. Eerie!

Meanwhile, Adam also finds himself getting closer with his “mysterious” neighbor, Harry (Normal People star and short-shorts king Paul Mescal), which definitely perks up our ears.

Image Credit: ‘All of Us Strangers,’ Searchlight Pictures

While there’s no confirmation quite yet (the official plot synopsis keeps things vague), some assume Adam and Harry will strike up a romance, which wouldn’t be too surprising considering so much of Haigh’s work focuses on queer characters and themes.

In the source novel, the protagonist begins seeing a woman who lives in his building, and it would appear Mescal is playing a gender-swapped version of that character. Not to mention, last summer, a video of Mescal and Scott filming in a gay bar went viral, and it appears to be the same location featured in the first official image of the movies, seen above.

Looks pretty gay to us! But we’ll have to wait until the film hits theater son December 22 to know for sure.

By the way, that’s the same date the wrestling dynasty biopic The Iron Claw—starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson—is set to premiere, which folks are already joking is the next “Barbenheimer” for a certain type of moviegoer:

Let’s dub it…. Claw Of Us Strangers? The Iron Strangers? Whatever you want to call it, mark your calendars, because that’s December 22. And Saltburn comes to theaters one month prior on November 24.

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