'Call Me by Your Name' Director's New Movie 'Queer' Has Found Its Stars

Drew Starkey (Outer Banks) and Daniel Craig (007 franchise, Glass Onion) have been tapped as the main actors in the upcoming adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ short novel Queer.

According to Variety, the film adaptation will be directed by famed Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino and will also star Lesley Manville (The Crown), Henry Zaga (The New Mutants), and frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman. The entire Mexico city-set movie will be filmed in Rome’s refurbished Cinecittà Studios.

Craig will play the renowned counterculture author’s alter ego, an outcast American expat named Lee, living in Mexico after fleeing from a drug bust in New Orleans. He becomes madly infatuated with Starkey’s character Allerton, a discharged American Navy serviceman and drug user who plays hard to get and turns Lee’s yearnings into an obsession.

“It is one of my all-time favorite books,” said British designer Jonathan Anderson. “And the film has everything — Mexico, lots of drugs, and Daniel Craig.”

Queer marks the most prominent film role thus far for Starkey, who’s gained global stardom as Rafe Cameron on Netflix’s Outer Banks. While Craig has had a more thorough film background, he more recently made headlines for playing gay private investigator Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

As for director Guadagnino, he made his first foray into the film world with the tender romantic drama Call Me by Your Name, which went on to score four Oscar nominations, including one for main actor Timothée Chalamet.