While there has been plenty of rumor and speculation whether Luca Guadagnino will direct a follow-up film to 2017’s achingly sweet gay coming-of-age drama Call Me By Your Name, the same ambiguity doesn’t apply to the book it’s adapted from — the novel of the same name is definitely getting a sequel, and it’ll be released in October 2019.
Novelist André Aciman has confirmed that he’s well underway in writing the new work, which is titled Find Me.
Related: ‘Call Me By Your Name’ director creates provocative, homoerotic new show for HBO
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Aciman’s publisher, put out these plot details:
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“In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father Samuel, now divorced, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train leads to a relationship that changes Sami’s life definitively. Elio soon moves to Paris where he too has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a professor in northern New England with sons who are nearly grown, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe.”
A pivotal scene in the film version of Call Me By Your Name comes when Elio’s father, Samuel, gives Elio some words of encouragement in regards to experimenting with sexuality. You get the sense that Samuel wishes he had had the same opportunity to explore. Could this “chance encounter on a train” be with another man? We’d say there’s a very strong possibility that’s the case.
Speaking to Vulture, Aciman said:
“The world of Call Me By Your Name never left me. Though I created the characters and was the author of their lives, what I never expected was that they’d end up teaching me things about intimacy and about love that I didn’t quite think I knew until I’d put them down on paper. The film made me realise that I wanted to be back with them and watch them over the years.”
Related: Twitter is coming up with hilarious names for the ‘Call Me By Your Name’ sequel
Meanwhile, the cinematic follow-up may not end up happening. Just this week, Armie Hammer, who played Oliver, said:
“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.
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?”
And now we leave you with this CMBYN gag from a recent episode of Comedy Central’s hilarious show, The Other Two:
Billy Budd
I am sure I will enjoy it, provided that there won’t be any characters dying slowly of aids. I would find that intolerable.
@HarryB at q-meet.us
Will wait for it
jcoberkrom
I am sooo “I don’t care.” Not only do money grabs annoy me, but let’s face it would you do a sequel to “Gone With The Wind”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “The Way We Were”
Great movies stand on their own. Sequels are not art but an indication of how bereft Hollywood is of originality.
HankHarris
Not sure of the purpose of this, except for a money grab. The book has a flash forward that provides a (somewhat) satisfying ending. Fleshing out the years between could have been done then, so this feels forced.
Dwik27
Sequels rightfully get a bad rap – BUT – they present an opportunity for the artist. For if the artist, the writer, the director, the actors, can pull it off and make a great sequel, then they are truly worthy of the name “artist”. With great care and sensibility, it can be done.
As far as Armie Hammer’s comments – I think they are spot on. Being cautious and not expecting an emotional repeat of the original experience is wise. But that doesn’t mean the second experience has to be less. It can be different and great in its own right. I hope it all happens – from the book to the film – the writing, the directing, the acting. I hope it is all great – again.