Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ to Premiere at Cannes?

Some good intel I’ve just received about a major film we can look forward to seeing soon.

Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” might have its world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival which is set to take place May 14 to 25, 2024. It could be the first time Guadagnino brings one of his films on the Croisette — he’s mostly stuck with Venice, having premiered five of his films there.

Based on William S. Burroughs’ controversial novel, “Queer,” Guadagnino’s film wrapped production last July and has been in post production ever since. The film stars Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman and Lesley Manville.

Burroughs‘ work was written as a quasi-sequel to his semi-autobiographical 1953 novel “Junkie.” Its homosexual themes were deemed too controversial at the time for readers, and it went unpublished until 1985.

The source material is loosely inspired by Burroughs’ own life, and his time spent in Mexico, surviving on the subsidies handed out by the US government following World War II, not to mention his struggles and dependence on heroin.

Guadagnino also has “Challengers,” starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, which, after being much delayed, is set for release on April 26. It was supposed to premiere at Venice last fall, but got pulled out in the last minute due to the actors strike.

So far, I haven’t heard much more intel about what other films might be going to Cannes. There’s George Miller’s “Furiosa” as a very real possibility. Maybe Clint Eastwood’s “Juror #2” can go? What else? These are the 25 that seem most likely to me — I’ll have a more in-depth analysis of 50 or so titles in February:

Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kind of Kindness”
Steve McQueen’s “Blitz”
Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis”
David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds”
Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind”
Sean Baker’s “Anora”
Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
Leos Carax’s “C’est Pas Moi”
Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17”
Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada”
Justin Kurzel’s “The Order”
Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End“
Pablo Larrain’s “Maria”
Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths”
Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez”
Paolo Sorrentino’s “Partenhope”
Jia Zhang-ke’s “We Shall Be All”
Michel Franco’s “Dreams”
Julian Schnabel’s “In the Hands of Dante”
Audrey Diwan’s “Emanuelle”
Arnaud Desplechin’s “Spectateurs”
Bi Gan’s “Resurrection”
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Serpent’s Path”
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s “Those Who Find Me”
Francois Ozon’s “Quand Vient L’Automne”
Alain Guiraudie’s “Miséricorde”