Movies - TV
Luca Guadagnino Is Teaming Up With Daniel Craig To Adapt William S. Burroughs' Queer
By JOSHUA MEYER
Daniel Craig is reportedly teaming up with Luca Guadagnino to bring William S. Burroughs’ novella “Queer” to the big screen. The semi-autobiographical story, published in 1985, centers on William Lee — the protagonist of Burroughs’ 1953 novel “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict” — who pursues a discharged sailor on the American expat bar scene in Mexico City.
According to Deadline, Guadagnino’s adaptation has been in development for some time, and the filmmaker is now acquiring the funds to make it a reality. The film would be a far departure from Craig’s previous roles, with Grove Atlantic describing “Queer” as “a haunting tale of possession and exorcism,” with the symbolic exorcism presumably being that of Lee’s heroin dependency.
Grove Atlantic provided a partial summary of "Queer": “Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, ‘Queer’ follows Lee, the protagonist of Burroughs’s debut novel [‘Junkie’], a man afflicted with acute heroin withdrawal and romantic yearnings for Eugene Allerton.” The film could explore “the ugly American at his ugliest” and may help Craig further shed his James Bond image.