Daniel Craig Is Going Queer for Luca Guadagnino
Craig will star in the Call Me By Your Name director’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel of the same name.
Luca Guadagnino has tapped Daniel Craig as his next leading man. The actor will star in Guadagnino’s adaption of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novel, Queer, according to Above the Line. The story was a followup to Burroughs’ 1953 novel Junkie and Burroughs has said Queer represents his life off heroin. Likely, Craig will star as Lee, the protagonist of Burroughs’ story.
Queer follows Lee as he’s living in Mexico City among American ex-pat college students and bar owners. Self-conscious and insecure, Lee eventually pursues Allerton, a character based on a former Navy Serviceman Burroughs actually befriended during his time in Mexico. Burroughs originally wrote the novel between 1951 and 1953, but waited over thirty years before publishing it.
This isn’t the first time a Queer film adaption has been pursued by the Hollywood sect. In 2011, Steve Buscemi was set to direct a film based on the book with Stanley Tucci and Ben Foster attached to star. He even read part of the Oren Moverman-written script at the Sarasota Film Festival that year, but it never got off the ground, and now it’s Guadagnino and Craig’s turn.
Though we have a bit of time before this movie will hit screens, there will be no lack of the director and actor in the meantime. Guadagnino is still promoting his latest Timothée Chalamet-starring film, Bones & All, as well as working on Challengers starring Zendaya and Josh O’Connor. Craig, meanwhile, has returned as Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out sequel, which had a very successful one-week run in theaters and will be hitting Netflix at the end of the month.
