Despite the director’s suggestion that the second part is unlikely to ever come to fruition, Luca Guadagnino revisited the idea of adding a sequel to his remake of the horror classic Suspiria. The remake was originally ‘conceived as the first half of a bigger story’ and was originally titled Suspiria: Part 1.

“How? How, my dear?” Acknowledging the poor commercial performance of his visceral take on the Dario Argento film, he adds: “The movie made absolutely nothing. It was a disaster at the box office,” Luca explained to The Film Stage when asked if there will ever be a sequel.

“I know that people are liking it more and more now. I loved making that movie. It’s very dear to me. But writer David Kajganich and I had really conceived it as the first half of a bigger story.”

According to Guadagnino himself, prior to the Suspiria premiere in 2018, the second installment would have expanded on the origins of Tilda Swinton’s Madame Blanc and Helena Markos (the latter as “a charlatan woman in the year 1200 in Scotland”). That’s not all, either. In the interview with The Film Stage, Guadagnino adds: “I can tell you that in part two the storyline was layered in five different time zones and spaces.”

“Sequels are an attitude of the soul,” he also noted. “You want to do things because you want to spend time with people that you love, the actors you love, the writers you love.”

If not for Suspiria, the sequel to Call Me By Your Name, is sure to happen, since it’s in the works. That means Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer will reprise their roles as Elio and Oliver.