Luca Guadagnino‘s romantic drama Call Me By Your Name has been a major player in this year’s awards conversations, and without spoiling anything, the movie’s ending suggests a finality to the story of its two lovers. But we may not have seen the end of Elio (Timothee Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) just yet. In a new interview, the director hints that he might make not just one Call Me By Your Name sequel, but many.



Back in October, Guadagnino mentioned that he’d like to make a sequel to his luscious Italian-set drama, and at the time I assumed it was just one of those things that a filmmaker says on the awards circuit…something that could generate a headline or two, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll translate into anything real. But now I’m realizing that he may have been more serious about revisiting these characters than I thought.

In a conversation with The Guardian, Guadagnino strongly hinted that he’ll be returning to tell more stories of his lead characters as their lives progress:

“These characters are so fantastic, and I want to know what happens to them. The last 40 pages of the book tell you about 20 years in the life of Oliver and Elio. So I started to think about Michael Apted’s Up, and the cycle of films [Francois] Truffaut devoted to the character of Antoine Doinel. And I thought, maybe it’s not a question of sequel, it’s a question of chronicling everyone in this film. I think seeing these characters growing in the bodies of these actors will be quite fantastic.”

Michael Apted’s Up movies is a series of documentary films that revisits the same people every seven years to see how they’ve evolved over time (Apted has been making them since 1964, and the newest entry should be filmed next year). So for the director to evoke that series implies that there could be multiple sequels (although maybe they would better be described as spin-offs following each character?), and both Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet might be on board to reprise their roles. But it’s the language in that last sentence – how Guadagnino specifically says that seeing the characters grow “will be” quite fantastic – that makes this feel like more of a definitive plan than just a throwaway possibility that will evaporate into the ether once awards season is over.

The first movie ends so beautifully that any return runs the risk of spoiling some of that initial magic. And as Birth.Movies.Death points out, another reason that the first movie works so well is because of screenwriter James Ivory‘s script, and Ivory is currently 89 years old. So the question is: do you want to see more stories of Oliver and Elio? Do you think a sequel could recapture the tactile and intimate romance of the original?