Luca Guadagnino Is Teaming Up With Daniel Craig To Adapt William S. Burroughs' Queer

Just imagine if Daniel Craig's version of James Bond never returned from his beach bar retirement in "Skyfall," and instead got addicted to heroin, before quitting the drug and going through withdrawals while pining over a handsome sailor. That could be something like what we'll get with "Queer," which will reportedly team Craig with "Call Me By Your Name" and "Suspira" filmmaker Luca Guadagnino for an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella. The semi-autobiographical story, published in 1985, centers on Lee — the protagonist of Burrough's 1953 novel "Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict" — who pursues a discharged Navy soldier on the American expat bar scene in Mexico City.

According to Deadline, Guadagnino has had this adaptation of "Queer" in development for some time and is now acquiring the funds to finally make it a reality. Both he and Craig are coming off the release of a new film, with "Bones and All" and "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" having competed at the box office in some places over Thanksgiving weekend.

"Glass Onion" only remained in theaters for one week ahead of its upcoming Netflix release, but it made a strong enough commercial showing that some said Netflix left a pile of money on the table by giving it such a limited run. By contrast, even with Timothée Chalamet in the movie, "Bones and All" has been off to a slow start, perhaps because Thanksgiving moviegoers weren't in the mood to watch a cannibalistic love story so soon after eating themselves into a holiday food coma with turkey. (On the plus side, the movie won Guadagnino the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, and it's been earning Oscar buzz for Taylor Russell as Chalamet's fellow fine young cannibal.)

Independent publisher Grove Atlantic describes "Queer" as "a haunting tale of possession and exorcism," with the metaphorical exorcism, in this case, presumably being that of Lee's heroin dependency. I'm only familiar with the work of William S. Burroughs, like "Naked Lunch," through reputation, but "Queer" would certainly mark a departure for Craig. After playing a womanizing secret agent and action hero for 15 years, the actor retired from the role of James Bond last year with "No Time to Die" and has since taken steps to shed some of his 007 image. In "Glass Onion," Craig explores a new side to his character, Benoit Blanc, and in a recent Belvedere Vodka commercial, directed by Taika Waititi, he even showed off some of his dance moves, as seen in the video above.

Here's a partial synopsis for "Queer" from Grove Atlantic:

"Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, 'Queer' follows William Lee, the protagonist of Burroughs's debut novel ['Junkie'], a man afflicted with acute heroin withdrawal and romantic yearnings for Eugene Allerton. As Lee breaks down over the course of his hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the ugly American at his ugliest."

We'll keep you updated on the development of "Queer" as it progresses.