Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they have acquired worldwide rights to Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name. The film, based on André Aciman’s acclaimed novel of the same name, is directed by Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, the upcoming Suspiria) and co-written by James Ivory, Walter Fasano and Guadagnino. It will have its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in the Premieres section.
Starring Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me by Your Name is produced by Peter Spears, Emilie Georges, Guadagnino, James Ivory, Marco Morabito, Howard Rosenman, and Rodrigo Teixeira. Naima Abed, Tom Dolby, Sophie Mas, Lourenco Sant’Anna, Derek Simonds and Margarethe Baillou served as executive producers. Original songs in the film were written and performed by Sufjan Stevens.
The vital and cultivated Elio (Chalamet), only child of the American-Italian-French Perlman family, is facing another lazy summer at his parents’ villa in the beautiful and languid Italian countryside when Oliver (Hammer), an academic who has come to help with Elio’s father’s research, arrives in Call Me by Your Name.
“Sony Pictures Classics has always struck me as the ideal home for cinema of real auteurs. It is a place where the search for a language and for unique stories is welcomed with enthusiasm and generosity by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Dylan Leiner,” said Guadagnino. “To me the collaboration with this excellent team is a dream come true, and ‘Call Me by Your Name’ is the perfect film for it. It is a very personal project, and making it was a moving journey with Armie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Aciman, Sufjan Stevens, and naturally with the great James Ivory. Through SPC this story will certainly find a wide audience in America and in the rest of the World. It is a film about the inexorable force of desire and love, as experienced through any path one might find on his/her way.”
Stated Sony Pictures Classics, “Visually rich, stunning, deeply emotional and sensual, ‘Call Me by Your Name’ confirms Luca Guadagnino as one the world’s master filmmakers. It will be a privilege to bring the movie to audiences around the world.”
The deal was negotiated by WME Global and UTA Independent Film Group, on behalf of the filmmakers.