Luca Guadagnino Vows Daniel Craig-Starring 'Queer' Will Feature Plenty of 'Scandalous' Sex Scenes

"Call Me by Your Name" and "Challengers" director Luca Guadagnino says his next film, "Queer," is his "most personal," and promises there will be abundant (and scandalous) sex in the movie.

The celebrated director made his remarks to an audience at a June 22 event titled "Meeting with Luca Guadagnino" at the Pesaro International Film Festival in Italy, reported Cinecittà. The director was a guest of honor at the festival, the film news outlet noted.

Guadagnino related the film back to an unexpected classic: 1948's "The Red Shoes," by filmmakers Michael Powell, an Englishman, and Emeric Pressburger, a Jewish Hungarian who lived in various European locales as the Nazis rose to power before finding refuge in London.

Calling "Queer" "a tribute to Powell and Pressburger, Guadagnino told his audience, "I've seen 'The Red Shoes' at least 50 times, and I think [Powell and Pressburger] would appreciate the sex scenes in 'Queer,' which are numerous and quite scandalous."

The film stars "James Bond" actor Daniel Craig, who has not been shy about playing queer. Craig starred in John Maybury's 1998 Francis Bacon biopic "Love is the Devil" as the famed painter's male lover. Craig also portrays his "Knives Out" detective Benoit Blanc as gay, and he even intimated during his 15-year, five-film reign as James Bond that the celebrated secret agent was bisexual.

As previously reported, early word on the movie leaked from Cannes last month, where a writer for World of Reel heard from a producer attending the festival that the three-hour-long film – the second project Guadagnino has undertaken with "Challengers" screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes – is "fantastic" and may be Craig's "best work."

"Clocking in at 3 hours, 'Queer' is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1953 novel of the same name, a story so filled with homosexuality that it was deemed too controversial at the time to be released and went unpublished for close to 30 years, until 1985," World of Reel thumbnailed.

In the film, a man named Lee amorously pursues a fellow American in Mexico, Allerton (played by "Love Simon" alum Drew Starkey), while simultaneously searching for a hallucinogenic substance.

Burroughs' works are singular in style and perspective, often focusing on drug use and LGBTQ+ characters. His most famous novel, "Naked Lunch," was long deemed to be unfilmable, but David Cronenberg – a master of the body horror genre – managed the transition with the 1991 Peter Weller-starring feature.

Guadagnino explained to his film festival audience that he has three other projects in various stages of completion in addition to "Queer," Cinecittà noted.

Guadagnino's upcoming thriller "After the Hunt" will begin lensing next month, World of Reel noted. The movie stars Julia Roberts, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri, and is an homage "to Woody Allen's Bergman cinema," the director told his film festival audience.

"Also in the pipeline are 'Camere Separate' ('Separate Rooms'), based on the novel by Pier Vittorio Tondelli," Cinecittà relayed, "and a new documentary on Bernardo Bertolucci" that Guadagnino said "will be called 'Joie de vivre' ('Joy of Life') and will talk about my relationship with him, with Bernardo," the director continued.

"Queer" will premiere this summer at the Venice Film Festival.