We’ve finally got some news! Queer is set to premiere in competition(!) at the 81st Venice Film Festival! The announcement also came with a first-look image of Drew and Daniel, but I’ll wait for the HQ to come out to be added to our gallery. So exciting! The festival will run from August 28th to September 7th.
Ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival this Tuesday, A24 has acquired Queer for U.S. distribution! No official date yet, but they’re targeting to release it later this year for an awards run. Another new image from the film has also been released, finally giving us a proper look at Drew as Eugene Allerton! You can find it in higher-quality and bigger version in our gallery.
Deadline has learned that A24 has taken US on Luca Guadagnino’s next movie Queer, starring Daniel Craig. Since I saw early footage for this film a year ago in Italy, A24 was always seen as the destination for the filmmakers given the distributor’s finesse in handling edgy fare, which is exactly what this William S. Burroughs feature adaptation is with Craig breaking the mold, much like he did with 007. Queer began screening to distributors via CAA Media Finance in late June and we heard then A24 was kicking the tires. There were other suitors. A24 came through and the deal just closed. All of this spells for a theatrical release.
Deadline
Movie Productions > Queer (2024) > Production Stills
On the eve of the Venice Film Festival debut of Queer, a special dinner was held to celebrate it, hosted by W editor-in-chief Sara Moonves and Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson. The cast also reunited at the event, including Drew, Daniel Craig, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, and Omar Apollo, along with director Luca Guadagnino. Visit our gallery for some photos of Drew at the event!
Public Appearances > 2024 > September 02: W Magazine Dinner
Drew stepped out last Monday night for the premiere of Queer at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival! No other co-stars were present at the event, but he was joined by director Luca Guadagnino. There’s not much photos like in Venice, but I have added those I’ve gotten into our gallery!
Public Appearances > 2024 > September 09: ‘Queer’ Premiere – 2024 Toronto International Film Festival
Queer had its U.S. premiere at the 62nd New York Film Festival last October 6th as the festival’s Spotlight Gala. Drew looked stunning as always in a custom LOEWE suit! I have added over 100 photos of Drew at the event in our gallery!
Public Appearances > 2024 > October 06: ‘Queer’ Premiere – 62nd New York Film Festival – Outside
Public Appearances > 2024 > October 06: ‘Queer’ Premiere – 62nd New York Film Festival – Arrivals
Public Appearances > 2024 > October 06: ‘Queer’ Premiere – 62nd New York Film Festival – Intro & Q&A
Drew attended the special presentation of Queer during the BFI London Film Festival last October 17th! He definitely stood out in a green custom LOEWE suit. How adorable of him to borrow a photographer’s camera at the red carpet! Also present were director Luca Guadagnino and LOEWE creative director Jonathan Anderson. They also did a Q&A session following the screening. I have updated the gallery with over 300 high-quality photos of Drew at the event!
Public Appearances > 2024 > October 17: ‘Queer’ Special Presentation – 68th BFI London Film Festival – Arrivals
Public Appearances > 2024 > October 17: ‘Queer’ Special Presentation – 68th BFI London Film Festival – Inside
The first official trailer for Queer is finally out! I love the vibe that it gives and that it doesn’t give away spoilers like some trailers these days do. And if you’ve read the book, you’ll recognize some scenes and quotes! Check it out below, and HD trailer screencaps in our gallery. I’ve also added posters and additional stills.
Movie Productions > Queer (2024) > Posters
Movie Productions > Queer (2024) > Production Stills
Movie Productions > Queer (2024) > Official Trailer – Screencaptures
Drew and Daniel were on the cover in the November 6th issue of Variety Magazine! They talked all about Queer, including the audition process, rehearsals, and much more. Check out the outtakes and scans in our gallery! You can read an excerpt below, and the full interview in our press archive.
Photo Sessions > 2024 > 005: Variety
Magazine Scans > 2024 > Variety – November 06, 2024
Welcome to the world of “Queer.” Guadagnino, who pushed tennis-as-sex metaphors to thrilling heights earlier this year with “Challengers” and gave the world Timothée Chalamet fornicating with a peach in 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name,” returns to the big screen with another big swing. “Queer” is based on Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs’ novella, published in 1985, which fictionalizes the author’s own experiences of recreational heroin use and his sensual love affair with a discharged serviceman. (In the era the book and film depict, to be gay was perhaps the more dangerous of the two experiences.)
Craig, in his first film outside the James Bond and “Knives Out” franchises in seven years, plays William Lee. On the run after a drug bust and enmeshed in a hard-drinking and edgy crowd at one of his regular watering holes, Lee encounters the beautiful and aloof Eugene Allerton (Starkey), with whom he comes to share both painful intimacies and, well … substances that were once visible in the film’s opening sequence.
There are universal aspects to “Queer” — the struggle to be truly vulnerable, the experience of falling in love and battles with insecurity. But a gay audience will likely find it particularly striking: It’s a film that’s utterly unafraid to depict both the literal fact of sexuality and the inner turmoil that leads many to use sex to escape. “I’ve been in the characters’ world before,” says the singer Omar Apollo, who plays one of Craig’s other love interests (and who, unlike Craig and Starkey, is openly queer). “You’re in a hotel, the guy’s sitting down … I feel like I’ve been there before.”
The film’s first cut came in at three and a half hours. “I’d love people to see it, because there’s other things going on,” Craig says. But even whittled down to a (relatively!) slight 135 minutes, “Queer” is capacious, making room both for a frank depiction of male sexuality and for touches of surrealistic fantasy. It’s at once as direct a documentation of gay love as anything on-screen since 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” (pushing much farther even than Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” which panned away from its key sex scene) and a joyful-yet-melancholy ayahuasca journey.
And it’s a turning point for both of its leads. For Craig, post-Bond and in the middle of his run as “Knives Out” sleuth Benoit Blanc, it’s a test of his star power. “Queer” isn’t designed to be a blockbuster — indeed, it’s about as risky as a film can get. (A24, which picked up the title earlier this summer before film festival season, will give the movie a limited theatrical release on Nov. 27.) How many of Craig’s fans — and how many awards voters — will join Craig on this trip? And for Starkey, it’s an introduction: After showing promise as bad boy Rafe Cameron in Netflix’s teen drama “Outer Banks,” he gets the opportunity to share the screen with a movie star — and to prove he can more than hold his own.
Together, the pair have crafted a love story every bit as distinctive as the Zendaya-led throuple in “Challengers.” “At its very core, there’s a deep love for each other,” Starkey says. “It’s their souls, beyond language, beyond their bodies — and beyond Allerton’s ability to communicate that.” Thwarted by social taboos and by their own limitations, Lee and Allerton connect fleetingly but intensely. The sex scenes that they share will likely unsettle Gen Z audiences, who have made clear that lovemaking in movies is better left off-screen.
Variety