Following the Collapse of ‘Sgt. Rock’, How Many Unmade Luca Guadagnino Films Do We Have Now?

Italian director Luca Guadagnino is one of the most sought-after filmmakers of the past few years. Following the success of Call Me By Your Name, he’s seemingly become the busiest man in Hollywood, perennially attacked to the next big project with the hottest stars working today. The downside to that is that fans are now all too familiar with the experience of getting excited for a Guadagnino project only for it to fall apart, be cancelled or just disappear into the ether. This week, it happened again as The Hollywood Reporter announced that that his planned DC Studios film, Sgt. Rock, was shelved. This is in spite of it being in the early stages of pre-production and having Colin Farrell attached for the lead role. It’s unclear as to why the project was shut down so soon to its planned Summer shooting date.

Guadagnino projects are usually announced, often with a big actor on board, then sort of fall to the wayside. It’s rare for him to get this far into the work before the studio cans it. Alas, the film industry is extremely fickle and it’s tough to get your foot in the door, even if you’re an Oscar nominee and festival darling. Every great director has a ton of projects they wanted to make that never materialised. Some of us still mourn the lack of a David Cronenberg Frankenstein adaptation or Lynne Ramsay’s sci-fi reimagining of Moby-Dick. With Guadagnino, the sheer volume of announced projects that never happen is almost a running joke, but it’s not unique to him. If anything, it’s a solid sign that he enjoys working, has a lot of good people on his side eager to collaborate, and is happy to be prolific. But damn, there are a few titles here that I truly mourn.

Here are just a few of the projects that Guadagnino announced but, for various reasons, never moved forward with. And no, this isn’t all of them. We would be here for days.

AUNTIE MAME

One of Guadagnino’s most frequent collaborators is Tilda Swinton. In 2009, following their second film together, I Am Love, they considered remaking the classic comedy Auntie Mame. While the pair went on to make A Bigger Splash and Suspiria, this one fell by the wayside. By 2016, Swinton had brought Annie Mumolo on board to write the script but Luca was no longer attached.

THE BIG NOWHERE

James Ellroy’s caustic and hard-boiled noirs seem tailor-made for cinema given how often they are set in L.A. and feature Hollywood stories and figures. The Big Nowhere, which precedes L.A. Confidential in the author’s L.A. Quartet, follows a series of sex murders in the city that may or may not involve the infamous gangster Mickey Cohen. Guadagnino was attached to this one way back in 2012.

WARTIME LIES

Is there any greater sign of a director’s ambition than wanting to revive an unmade Kubrick project? In 2018, Guadagnino told The New Yorker that he ‘desperately wanted’ to take over Wartime Lies, an adaptation of Louis Begley’s novel that Kubrick had spent many years researching. The novel is set in Poland during the Nazi occupation of the country and follows two Jews who disguise themselves as Catholics to survive the war. Kubrick spent decades trying to get it off the ground. Guadagnino asked David Kajganich, one of his regular collaborators, to write the screenplay based on Kubrick’s notes, which are kept in his archives at the University of the Arts London. This is one that Guadagnino is still keen to make, according to a 2024 interview.

BURIAL RITES

Australian author Hannah Kent’s debut novel won a ton of awards and was one of the most acclaimed books of 2013. It tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a real woman from Northern Iceland of the 1800s who became the last woman put to death in the country after she was accused of murder. Burial Rites was going to be a star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence. Not now, sadly, although I still think she’d be great in that role.

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

In 2018, Guadagnino told The New Yorker that he was planning to turn Bob Dylan’s album Blood on the Tracks into a film. That album, widely considered to be one of Dylan’s best, has often been viewed as the singer’s autobiographical exploration of his life and split from his first wife, although he has denied this. it’s pretty rare to see albums get adapted into films - remember Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees but not the Beatles? Certainly, I see the potential for something quite daring here. This one collapsed when Guadagnino couldn’t get the budget he wanted.

LORD OF THE FLIES

Honestly, I’m surprised we haven’t had a new The Lord of the Flies movie already. What could be more terrifyingly of our moment than a drama about public schoolboys trying to create their own democracy and having it end in blood and tyranny? Beloved young adult author Patrick Ness had been hired to adapt the novel, which was a good choice since he knows a thing or two about dystopian stories for teens that break your heart. First announced in 2019, this one has had no updates since 2023, when producer Lindsay Anderson Beer said that Guadagnino was still attached. I doubt that’s the case now.

SCARFACE

Take one of the most iconic gangster films ever made, add the Coen brothers, then give it to Guadagnino and what do you get? The planned second remake of Scarface, first announced in May 2020. Luca wanted his version to be up to date but still as shocking as its predecessors. By November 2023, he had left the project. A lot of things were announced in lockdown that never came to be so this isn’t the biggest surprise. It also might be for the best. Remaking a classic is tricky territory and films written but not directed by Joel and Ethan Coen have a spotty track record.

SCOTTY BOWERS BIOPIC

Scotty Bowers was an infamous hustler who long claimed that he was responsible for procuring prostitutes for closeted Hollywood icons. His legendary memoir Full Service goes into delicious detail and names a lot of names. The veracity of his claims has been questioned for decades, with many of his outings becoming accepted lore among classic Hollywood geeks. Whatever the case, it’s certainly exciting fodder for a movie. In 2020, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg announced plans to write a Bowers biopic for Guadagnino, who wanted it to be a great comedy. This one seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe the prospect of naming all those names put the fear in Searchlight Pictures, or maybe Goldberg and Rogen couldn’t get the tone right. At least with this story, we have a fun documentary to watch instead.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

The ’80s miniseries of Brideshead Revisited is legendary, and since the BBC loves to do glossy adaptations of classic novels, why not remake it with Guadagnino? This one was announced in 2020, and the cast was set to include Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Andrew Garfield, and Rooney Mara. Guadagnino reportedly wanted a budget of $110 million to bring his vision to life, and since he didn’t want to compromise on the adaptation he’d already written, the project was shelved. In 2024, he talked about wanting to revive it, but that he’d need a miracle to do so.

AUDREY HEPBURN BIOPIC

Another biopic, although this one seems more conventional by design. Rooney Mara, who has long been compared to (and frequently seems to style herself like) Audrey Hepburn, is shepherding this project as a star vehicle for herself. Filming had been slated to begin in late 2023 but Mara revealed the following year that Guadagnino had left the biopic. There’s been no updates on this one, although I assume that Mara is still keen to make it, if nor no other reason than to prevent Lily Collins from stealing it away.

THE SHARDS

Guadagnino and Bret Easton Ellis was a combination that made sense. Indeed, we’re supposedly getting it in the form of the American Psycho remake, which Austin Butler is attached to. Whether or not that one will actually get made remains to be seen because, you know, it’s Luca. Before that one was announced, he was on board to make a miniseries of Ellis’s latest novel, The Shards. The book, his first novel in 13 years, is a fictionalized memoir of Ellis’s high school years. Jacob Elordi was reported to be in talks for a lead role. After Guadagnino left this one, Dream Scenario director Kristoffer Borgli took over, although earlier this year it was reported that Ryan Murphy was now in talks to save The Shards.