Daniel Craig is reminding audiences of his dramatic bona fides in his upcoming movie.
Queer, from Challengers director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes, stars Craig, 56, as an American expat in 1940s Mexico City who falls in love with a younger man played by Outer Banks star Drew Starkey.
Craig’s character William Lee “spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community,” as an official synopsis for the film reads. “His encounter with Eugene Allerton (Starkey, 30), an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.”
In the new trailer for the movie, which premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, the two principal characters can be seen wooing each other as they embark on a whirlwind romance and William finds himself opening up to a romantic connection.
Yannis Drakoulidis/Courtesy of A24
Queer is based on the 1985 seminal novella of the same name by William S. Burroughs, which the author wrote as a spiritual sequel to his semi-autobiographical 1953 work Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict.
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Craig, who has been married to Rachel Weisz since 2011, has played queer characters as recently as 2022’s Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, in which it was revealed that his sleuth Benoit Blanc lived with a male lover (played by Hugh Grant). “The less of a song and dance we make about that, the better, really, for me, because it just made sense,” he told Deadline soon after the Rian Johnson film’s release. “I don’t want people to get politically hung up on anything.”
Yannis Drakoulidis/Courtesy of A24
Filmmaker Guadagnino, 53, is an Oscar nominee for producing his 2017 film Call Me by Your Name. Between Challengers and Queer, he may have two competitive movies on his hands entering awards season.
Queer features a starry supporting cast, including Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Drew Droege and Omar Apollo. The movie releases in limited theaters Nov. 27.
