Dakota Johnson wanted to play Armie Hammer’s wife in Call Me By Your Name 2
Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has revealed a dream casting for the film’s mooted sequel.
Guadagnino has been remarkably open about his plans for a follow-up to the gay romance, which starred Timothée Chalamet as Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver.
The original film ended unhappily, with Oliver returning to the US and marrying a woman — and it sounds like he’s living a remarkably different life in the sequel.
In a joint interview with the New Yorker, Guadagnino filled in Hammer on his vision for Oliver’s life in the second film.
The director named frequent collaborator Dakota Johnson, who he worked with for films A Bigger Splash and Suspiria, as his dream casting for the role of Oliver’s wife.
Dakota Johnson (Andreas Rentz/Getty)
He told Hammer: “She has to be a New England kind of hoochie woman. You have, maybe, five children.”
The director also teased that the name of the film will not be Call Me By Your Name 2.
He said: “The only problem is the title. It cannot be Call Me by Your Name 2.”
Call Me By Your Name tells the love story between 17-year old Elio and 24-year old graduate student Oliver (Sony Pictures Classics)
Not everyone is on board with the sequel.
Screenwriter James Ivory, who adapted André Aciman’s novel for the first film, has criticised the idea and described discussion of it as “nonsense.”
Ivory told IndieWire he has no interest in returning to the material, and firmly poured cold water on the idea in an interview with the Independent.
The screenwriter told the online newspaper: “Luca would say that [he wants a sequel], having had a great success with it. But one wonders how you would cast such a film. You can’t make up Timothée Chalamet to look, say, 40. That would be terrible!”
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Ivory also specified that fundamental to the original story was that Elio “might have had a disappointment with Oliver but you knew within a very short time he was going to have all kinds of a successful love life.”
His view doesn’t seem to be shared by the cast, though.
In a previous interview with Variety, Hammer insisted: “It will happen because there are already people working on it and trying to make it happen.”
The stars have said they are both on board (Call Me By Your Name)
He added: “More than anything I trust the artistic direction to Luca and [novelist] André Aciman and to those guys who did such a good job handling it the first time around.
“The only thing I want to see is I want to see it happen. I want to do it again.
“I miss the whole crew. It was such a special time. It was such a collaborative, unique, and totally immersive filming experience that I never really had, nor since. If we get to do another one, I’ll feel really lucky.”
Chalamet has also confirmed that he is on board for a sequel, telling Time: “I don’t see any world where it doesn’t happen. I think André is comfortable with a sequel being made. I know Luca really wants it. And I know Armie and I are 1000 percent in.”
A plot outline for the second film was also teased by actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who played Elio’s dad.
He told Far Out Magazine: “[Guadagnino] seems to think that we might be able to pick up the action a few years later, to see what’s happened to these characters and the choices they’ve made, and life after this particularly momentous summer for them all.
“But it sounds like something he’s serious about, and André Aciman is thrilled I think at the idea.”
