CULTURE

Armie Hammer Doesn’t Want You to Get Your Call Me by Your Name Sequel Hopes Too High

“I think we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.”

March 19, 2019

Photographs by Mario Sorrenti, Styled by George Cortina

Just as he broke Timothée Chalamet’s heart in Call Me by Your Name, so, too, has Armie Hammer crushed the dreams of the CMBYN-loving world this week when he all but shut down the prospect of a sequel to the 2017 drama. In an interview with Vulture about his latest film, Project Mumbai, Hammer issued an almost total reversal of previous reports—including comments from power players like Chalamet and the director Luca Guadagnino—that had suggested a sequel was in the works.

When asked about the idea of a Call Me by Your Name 2, Hammer said, “The truth is, there have been really loose conversations about it, but at the end of the day—I’m sort of coming around to the idea that the first one was so special for everyone who made it, and so many people who watched it felt like it really touched them, or spoke to them. And it felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don’t know that anything will match up to the first, you know?” (But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try!)

Still, Hammer admitted that he hasn’t actually spoken to Chalamet or Guadagnino about these reservations. “I haven’t had that conversation with them explicitly. But I mean, look. If we end up with an incredible script, and Timmy’s in, and Luca’s in, I’d be an asshole to say no. But at the same time, I’m like, that was such a special thing, why don’t we just leave that alone?”

As for all those reports that the sequel already had a script and new characters were being cast, Hammer went ahead and shot those down too. “I’m not sure that it was ever really definitely going to happen. People just seemed so excited about it that we were like, ‘Oh, yeah, fuck it! We’ll do it, sure!’” he explained. “I was talking to Luca, and he was like, ‘I think it might be fun to do this, or it might be fun to do this!’ And I was like, ‘Those all sound like great ideas!’ But that’s as real as it is right now.”

This might come as a major surprise to Chalamet, who’s previously expressed his belief that a sequel is not only entirely inevitable but also something for which Hammer is fully on board. “I don’t see any world where it doesn’t happen,” Chalamet said last October. “I think [author André Aciman] is comfortable with a sequel being made. I know Luca really wants it. And I know Armie and I are 1,000 percent in.”