This year has been Luca Guadagnino’s year, and following the success of his erotic sports drama Challengers (2024), which is one of the best Prime Video movies right now, he’s about to break the internet once again with his upcoming romance drama Queer that stars Daniel Craig (Knives Out and Glass Onion) and Drew Starkey (Outer Banks and Love, Simon) with a screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes. The devil works hard, but Luca Guadagnino works harder.
The movie was picked up by production company A24, which makes up some of the best Max movies, and it’s just dropped the first trailer, which you can view below. Set for a November 27 US theatrical release, the first look at Guadagnino’s gay period drama fuels less tension compared to the trailer for Challengers and is more gentle in its insight to Craig and Starkey’s romantic bond – but it still packs the right dose of steaminess that we’ve come to expect with a Guadagnino drama.
In addition to Craig’s brilliantly awkward characterization are visually striking ‘will they, won’t they?’ moments that bring the lead protagonists closer together. The movie is expected to have a brief appearance from co-star singer Omar Apollo (who was on the Red, White and Royal Blue soundtrack) and will feature a number of other familiar actors such as Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City and Rushmore), Leslie Manville (Netflix’s The Crown) and Henry Zaga (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) – all of whom unfortunately don’t appear in the trailer.
From first glance, it seems as though Guadagnino is revisiting themes of age-gap relationships, which garnered significant attention in his coming-of-age drama Call Me By Your Name (2017) that starred Timothee Chalamet (Dune) as a 17 year-old who develops a romance with his father’s graduate student assistant – Call Me By Your Name is one of the best Netflix movies in the US and Australia, and is streaming on Prime Video in the UK. The new trailer for Queer certainly offers similarities, however this time around, the romance translates as less controversial.
What is the story of Guadagnino’s Queer?
Much like his 2017 romance drama Call Me By Your Name, which brought the story of André Aciman’s novel to the big screen, Guadagnino’s upcoming movie Queer is adapted from the 1985 semi-autobiographical novel of the same by William S. Burroughs.
In the 1950s in Mexico City, William Lee (Craig) is a self-conscious man in his late-40s living among bar owners and college students in a small community after escaping charges for drug use. When student and former GI Eugene Allteron (Starkey) arrives in the city, Lee is infatuated with him and is determined to establish a romance. Although Allteron is reluctant to entertain Lee’s advances, he comes to his senses and the two spark a romantic connection.
Queer will be released in US cinemas on November 27, 2024. Make sure to check back with TechRadar to see when it gets a streaming release date.
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