Call Me By Your Name director still wants to make a sequel with Timothée Chalamet

Call me by your name — just don't call it a sequel.

Luca Guadagnino, who directed Timothée Chalamet in 2017's Call Me By Your Name, still wants to make a follow-up to the Oscar-winning film — just don't call it a sequel.

"A sequel is an American concept," the filmmaker told IndieWire in a recent interview at the Telluride Film Festival. "It's more like the chronicles of Elio, the chronicles of this young boy becoming a man. It is something I want to do."

The first film followed Elio, an Italian teen in the 1980s (Chalamet) who experiences a summer of intoxicating romance with his father's research assistant, Oliver (played by Armie Hammer, whose career has since imploded following allegations of sexual assault). The romantic drama was a major hit with critics and on the awards circuit, winning an Oscar for James Ivory's adapted screenplay. It was also nominated for three other Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Chalamet.

Peter Spears/Sony Pictures Classics Luca Guadagnino directing Timothee Chalamet on 'Call Me By Your Name.'

Guadagnino has been open in the past about his desire to make another film following Chalamet's character if the timing could work out. As recently as last year, the director told Deadline, "The truth of the matter is, my heart is still there, but I'm working on this movie [Bones and All] now, and I'm hopefully going to do Scarface soon, and I have many projects and so will focus on this side of the Atlantic and the movies I want to make." Prior to that, Guadagnino mentioned in an interview with Italian publication Gay. It! that he had plans to meet with a writer he loves "very much" about penning the sequel after Ivory said he wouldn't return. But then the pandemic hit, and, like the rest of the world, he was not able to travel.

Fortunately, Guadagnino and Chalamet were able to team up for Bones and All, a road trip movie about a budding cannibal romance, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received rapturous applause.

Guadagnino told IndieWire he had always kept Chalamet in mind for future collaborations. "It's not as if I left Timothée at the height of his booming success, and then I found him four years later," Guadagnino told the outlet. "We kept close. I knew that there was not much time to wait until we worked together, but only for the right project."

Bones and All hits theaters Nov. 23.

Related content:

• Luca Guadagnino says Armie Hammer has 'nothing to do with' his cannibal movie Bones and All

• Luca Guadagnino sidelines Call Me By Your Name sequel as he reunites with Timothée Chalamet on new movie

• Seth Rogen to write a Scotty Bowers hustler film for director Luca Guadagnino