Armie Hammer clarifies Call Me by Your Name sequel status: 'It's not real until it is'

The burning flame of desire kindled between Call Me by Your Name characters Oliver and Elio may have flickered out for good, as actor Armie Hammer has suggested the (peach) juice from a potential sequel might not be worth the squeeze.

Despite stars Timothée Chalamet and director Luca Guadagnino having publicly addressed interest in developing a sequel to the Oscar-winning romance since its 2017 Sundance Film Festival debut, Hammer — who played opposite Chalamet as one half of the film’s central couple — said in a recent interview a continuation of the same-sex love story set in 1980s Italy isn’t formally in the works.

“There have been really loose conversations about it,” Hammer told Vulture during an interview promoting his new movie Hotel Mumbai. “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?”

The 32-year-old revealed he hasn’t had explicit conversations with Chalamet or Guadagnino about furthering the relationship between the teenage Elio (Chalamet) and his academic father’s live-in assistant, Oliver (Hammer), in a second film, but admitted that if the title lands “an incredible script, and Timmy’s in, and Luca’s in, I’d be an a—hole to say no…. But at the same time, I’m like, That was such a special thing, why don’t we just leave it alone?”

“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, f—k it! We’ll do it, sure!'” Hammer continued before consulting with his publicist on the actual status of Call Me by Your Name 2. “It’s not real until it is.”

Vulture previously reported that, during an October 2018 “in conversation” discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, Hammer revealed Guadagnino had laid out a potential plot for the sequel to the cinematic adaptation of André Aciman’s novel of the same name.

“Luca has walked me through the movie: where it starts, where it goes, where it ends, all the characters, and everything that’s supposed to happen,” Hammer said, adding that “chronologically in the story line, it doesn’t happen right after the first one. There is a gap. So Luca wants to wait so that we age a bit more so that gap makes sense, kind of like a Linklater [Boyhood] thing.”

Guadagnino, whom has long divulged his vision for a sequel (to be set after the fall of the Berlin Wall) across various interviews, including in an October 2018 New Yorker article in which he revealed he wanted frequent collaborator Dakota Johnson to play Oliver’s spouse amid his post-Elio life.

“She has to be a New England kind of hoochie woman,” Guadagnino said. “[They’ll] have, maybe, five children.”

Chalamet has also expressed interest in filming the movie, telling Time last year he didn’t see “any world where it doesn’t happen,” that “André is comfortable with a sequel being made,” and that he and Hammer were “1,000% in.”

However, screenwriter James Ivory — who won an Oscar for writing the first film’s script — expressed disinterest in returning for another installment in a November 2018 interview.

“No, I don’t and I wouldn’t want to be involved,” he told The Film Stage when asked if he would contribute to the second film. “I can’t imagine having to make Timothée Chalamet look 45. I mean, that would be horrendous and so fake looking if that’s what they are going to do! But any case, André Aciman just laughed at the idea to me. He said it was not a good idea. They can’t do a sequel, I think, without him being on board. It’s his characters and his story. But that seems to have died down a bit. I haven’t heard much about it lately.”

Aciman subsequently tweeted about his desire to see Call Me by Your Name 2 in theaters, noting that he had begun work on a literary follow-up for Oliver and Elio.

Representatives for Hammer, Chalamet, Guadagnino, and distributor Sony Pictures Classics did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment on the Call Me by Your Name sequel. Read Hammer’s full interview with Vulture here.

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