Which Criterion Closet Pick Should Luca Guadagnino Remake?

Nor part of the promo push for After the Hunt, Luca “Everybody Kiss” Guadagnino got to take a tour of the Criterion Closet. It got us thinking: which of these movies is he most likely to remake some day? Guadagnino used to really pop off in the reinventing-a-classic space, with 2015’s A Bigger Splash riffing on Jacques Deray’s La Piscine and 2018’s Suspiria being his take on Dario Argento’s giallo gorefest. Recently, though, the director has been taking on more oblique inspos, like #MeToo and William Burroughs. Luca has a version American Psycho lined up, with Austin Butler reportedly putting on Patrick Bateman’s see-through raincoat. But will that move appear, or will it go his way Sgt. Rock adaptation? While we wait for Austin Butler’s killing spree, here are the Criterion films we think Guadagnino might artistically think next.

Guadagnino goes back to the source material when discussing this Scorsese film citing the novel it is based on in the same breath as Marty. That tells us he’s thinking big picture. With Suspiria, we’ve seen Guadagnino isn’t afraid to take on movies sacred to cinephiles. But what about movies considered profane to the sacred?

Well the work’s already half-done on this one. Guadagnino says he wrote a remake of Sam Fuller’s neo-noir when he was “a kid,” aka 20-years-old. Guadagnino says his take on the film (streaming on Tubibtw) “should remain unpublished, and undone and unseen.” He did call Fuller “one of the greatest directors who ever lived, so maybe adult Luca could take a stab at Shock Corridor?

Okay, so technically this movie is a reimagining of The Wages of Fear. But hear us out: what if everyone on the truck was bi? And the tension wasn’t just about whether the payload of dynamite was going to explode, but also whether everyone was about to explode sexually? Something to think about.