Daniel Craig is taking on a modern literary classic for his next project.
The Golden Globe nominee, 54, has been attached to star in Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino's upcoming adaptation of the seminal 1985 novel Queer by beat writer William S. Burroughs, according to Deadline.
In Queer, self-conscious and insecure Lee recounts his life in Mexico City, during which he befriends and pursues Allerton (based on Burroughs' friend Adelbert Lewis Marker), a recently discharged American Navy serviceman from Florida.
Although written between 1951 and 1953 as a spiritual sequel to his semi-autobiographical 1953 work Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, the book was unpublished until 1985, when Burroughs explained that it represented him off heroin.
Justin Kuritzkes is writing the screen adaptation, Deadline reported.
Steve Buscemi was previously set to direct another adaptation of the book in 2011, written by Oren Moverman, with Stanley Tucci, Ben Foster and John Ventimiglia attached to star.
Craig's casting comes on the heels of another scene-stealing performance in an LGBTQ role, after his Knives Out detective character Benoit Blanc was revealed to be gay in auteur Rian Johnson's new Netflix sequel Glass Onion, which hits the streaming platform on Dec. 23.
After his character was revealed to be living with another man (played by Hugh Grant), Johnson confirmed that Benoit is "obviously" gay.
Craig told Deadline of the revelation: "It's all good. The less of a song and dance we make about that, the better, really, for me, because it just made sense."
"And also, as I said at the [BFI London Film Festival], who wouldn't want to live with the human being that he happens to live with? It's nice, it's fun," Craig added. "And why shouldn't it be? I don't want people to get politically hung up on anything."
Gudagnino has also made a name for himself as an openly gay director with his critically and commercially lauded 2017 adaptation of another queer classic, André Aciman's 2007 novel Call Me by Your Name. The movie was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
