Luca Guadagnino's unrealized projects
In the early 1990s, Guadagnino wrote a script for a short film he wanted to do "on [the subject of] the male body", based on the "Penny Arcade Peep Show" excerpt from The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead by William S.
In 2009, following their collaboration on I Am Love, Guadagnino and star Tilda Swinton had "high hopes" to reunite for a Hollywood remake of 1958's Auntie Mame.
The screenplay by writing duo Neal Purvis and Robert Wade was featured on The Black List in 2009 and is based on the true story of a stand-off between two former best friends, one a local man and the other, head of the Mafia.
In 2012, Guadagnino was reportedly in discussions with financiers to direct an adaptation of the James Ellroy novel The Big Nowhere, to be produced by Heyday Films' David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford, along with Maurizio Grimaldi.
[19] In 2014, Sony Pictures hired Guadagnino to replace Sam Taylor-Johnson as director on a film adaptation of Robert Goolrick's romantic period thriller novel A Reliable Wife, written by Andrew Kevin Walker.
[23] In July 2017, Guadagnino signed up to direct a pitch from Kristina Lauren Anderson inspired by the classic ballet story Swan Lake, with Felicity Jones in the lead role.
Several studios including Universal, Paramount and TriStar bid for the film rights to the project, which was described as a "tentpole adaptation" of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet, that would follow the material closely.
[24] Guadagnino first alluded to making a sequel to Call Me by Your Name in November 2017,[25] and confirmed in March 2018 he was working on the story with writer André Aciman.
[26][27] Timothee Chalamet would announce in October that same year he and Armie Hammer were intending to return for the sequel,[28] and Guadagnino would approach Dakota Johnson for a role.
"[34] In the autumn/winter 2017 issue of Fantastic Man, Guadagnino stated that his dream project was an adaptation of Thomas Mann's 1901 novel Buddenbrooks, and that making it "would in a way encompass all my themes in one story.
"[35] In December 2017, it was reported that Guadagnino would direct Jennifer Lawrence in a film of Burial Rites, based on the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir who was accused of murder in a small Icelandic village in 1830.
[38] Guadagnino told The New Yorker in October 2018 that he was planning to turn Bob Dylan's album Blood on the Tracks into a feature film, with Richard LaGravenese writing the screenplay.
[42] It was additionally announced by The New Yorker in October 2018 that Guadagnino "desperately wanted" to direct Stanley Kubrick's abandoned project based on Louis Begley's Holocaust novel Wartime Lies.
[23] In September 2020, Guadagnino reaffirmed his intentions to make a film of Wartime Lies, stating that he had examined Kubrick's papers in the director's archive at University of the Arts London.
In July 2019, Deadline Hollywood reported Guadagnino entered negotiations to direct a new adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies for Warner Bros.[45] The project would find a screenwriter in April 2020, with Patrick Ness hired.
[49] As early as 2019, Guadagnino had begun work on a documentary called Intimacy, filmed in 35 mm, about "the state of exception that has been established" in the years following the attacks of the Bataclan in Paris.
[53] In August 2020, Guadagnino told Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times that he'd recently worked with Frank Ocean on a secret project, which was likely hamstrung as result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[41] On November 6, 2020, the BBC was reported to be adapting Evelyn Waugh's novel with Guadagnino set to write and direct, and Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett and Andrew Garfield named as potential members of the cast.
[55] On November 23, 2020 it was reported that Matthew López was set to write an adaptation of Christopher Castellani's novel Leading Men, with Guadagnino and Peter Spears producing and Searchlight Pictures distributing.
