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

Luca Guadagnino has a bone to pick with people who keep bringing up Armie Hammer's alleged cannibalistic sexual fantasies when talking about his coming-of-age horror film Bones and All.

The director says he didn't expect people to conflate the upcoming movie and the social media controversy surrounding Hammer, which includes allegations of disturbing text messages and rape accusations against the actor.

"It didn't dawn on me," Guadagnino told Deadline. "I realized this afterward when I started to be told of some of these innuendos on social media." It doesn't help that Bones and All stars Hammer's Call Me by Your Name costars Timothée Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg, and is based on Camille DeAngelis' 2015 novel of the same name, about a young cannibal couple who take a road trip across America.

MGM; Mike Coppola/Getty Timothée Chalamet in 'Bones and All'; Armie Hammer

Guadagnino swiftly shut down any comparisons between the art and the artist, noting that the film had been "in development for a number of years" before it was brought to him in 2020. Instead, he said it was the story's characters, whom he described as "disenfranchised and living on the edge of society," that initially caught his attention.

"Any link with anything else exists only in the realm of social media, with which I do not engage," the director said. "The relationship between this kind of digital muckraking and our wish to make this movie is nonexistent, and it should be met with a shrug. I would prefer to talk about what the film has to say, rather than things that have nothing to do with it."

In fact, Guadagnino said the speculation and comparisons were a "travesty towards the fundamental need for new attitudes to the ways in which we work together and deal with one another," adding, "Women have historically been put in a lesser position by patriarchal entitlement, and it's important for that injustice to be addressed constructively so that it brings about real change."

He concluded, "The muckraking of social media doesn't address anything constructively, and the idea that this very profoundly important fight for equality can be misdirected in this way is something that frustrates me greatly. We mustn't diminish that most important thing with this muckraking."

Hammer's attorney did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.

Bones and All is out Nov. 23.

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