Will Find Me, the Call Me By Your Name sequel, follow the novel?

The Call Me By Your Name sequel, Find Me, has started its first stages of development with actors Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet set to return. Will it follow the novel?

Warning! Spoilers below for the novel “Find Me”, the 2019 sequel to Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman.

I think most fans of the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name already knew a sequel was coming, but it was never actually confirmed until recently. Director Luca Guadagnino mentioned the possibility of a sequel numerous times, including new potential characters and the hope of casting Dakota Johnson for a role, but nothing was ever set in stone. However, as a result of delays on account of COVID-19, Guadagnino made a recent statement that confirmed the sequel to Call Me By Your Name has officially entered the early, and I mean early, stages of development.

According to Guadagnino, he had plans to meet with a screenwriter who might pen the script, but the coronavirus pandemic put it on hold. I hope they have Skype accounts.

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Guadagnino has confirmed that Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer and everyone else from the original cast of Call Me By Your Name will be returning for the sequel. He made a statement with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that was later featured in Variety with a translation.

"“Of course, it was a great pleasure to work with Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Esther Garrel and the other actors. Everyone will be in the new movie. Before coronavirus, I made a trip to the United States to meet a screenwriter I love very much, whose name I don’t want to say, to talk about the second part. Unfortunately, we had to put it on hold.”"

The novel that Call Me By Your Name was adapted from has a sequel of its own titled “Find Me”, which tells the separate stories of Elio, Oliver, and Samuel Perlman spread out over 20 years. Picking up after the romantic summer of 1983, author Andre Aciman shines a special spotlight on heartbreak and the attempts we make to heal once we’ve loved and lost.

Elio’s father, Samuel, gets his own separate plotline this time (a section that takes up half the book and feels pointlessly shallow) where he embarks on a great romance following his divorce from Annella. Yes, for those who have only seen the movie, Elio’s parents get divorced and it’s solely for the purpose of giving Sami a relationship that parallels the one his son had.

Meanwhile, Elio has moved to Paris and has an affair with a much older man while holding onto the past, and then there’s Oliver, who is probably the saddest sack of misery in the whole novel. Elio hasn’t exactly moved on, but Oliver is like Noah from The Notebook. Rumpled, sad, lonely, and pining for someone he hasn’t seen in years.

By the end of the novel, Oliver and Elio have reunited and have decided to start a life together. Happy ending. Personally, I feel that Aciman pumped out “Find Me” only after he heard they were going to give Call Me By Your Name a sequel, writing it as quick fix-it to the original’s ending. The whole book feels like a long epilogue.

As far as we know, Guadagnino has his own plans for a sequel that doesn’t include most of what’s found in “Find Me.” It will be set a few years after the first film and will likely explore the AIDS crisis taking place in Berlin in 1989. However, that doesn’t mean that some of the 2019 novel won’t be incorporated such as Elio’s new lover Michel, Sami’s new wife, and a glimpse into Oliver’s unfulfilling marriage.

Who knows when the sequel will be released. I’m guessing sometime around 2022 or 2023, any earlier date doesn’t seem likely.