Luca Guadagnino on opening his new movie with a Woody Allen homage: "Why not?"

Guadagnino's After The Hunt stars Julia Roberts as a college professor confronted with #MeToo-style allegations, and opens with a title sequence referencing Allen's films.

By William Hughes | August 30, 2025 | 4:41pm

Andrew Garfield, Luca Guadagnino, Julia Roberts, and Ayo Edibiri promoting After The Hunt. Photo: JB Lacroix/FilmMagic

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Luca Guadagnino on opening his new movie with a Woody Allen homage:

The Venice Film Festival is running at the moment, delivering the one-two punch of new films from some of the planet’s biggest directors, as well as immediate-aftermath interviews with those same filmmakers. Sometimes, that just produces glowing softballs—the response to Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein sounds like it was a big, gory love-fest, for instance—and sometimes it produces something a little sharper. Take the reaction to Luca Guadagnino’s new film, After The Hunt, which delves into investigating #MeToo-ish narratives, and opens with a title sequence clearly acting as an homage to the work of Woody Allen. (Complete with font choices, the arrangement of the actors’ names, and a jazz score, all deliberately invoking imagery from movies like Crimes And Misdemeanors.) When asked why he so aggressively tipped his hat to Allen, who’s been at the center of what are now decades of opprobrium over allegations he sexually assaulted his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, Guadagnino was unabashed: “The crass answer would be, ‘Why not?'”

In the Challengers director’s estimation, his latest film is inextricably bound up with Allen’s work, so why try to hide it? “There is a canon that I grew up with, and when I started thinking about this movie with my collaborators, we couldn’t stop thinking of Crimes And Misdemeanors or Another Woman or Hannah And Her Sisters. I played with that graphic and font a few times before this, and I felt it was an interesting nod to thinking of an artist who has been, in a way, facing some sort of problems about his being and what is our responsibility in looking at an artist we love like Woody Allen.” (Although Guadagnino did note that Allen doesn’t own the Windsor font, despite its heavy association with his work; “And by the way, it’s a classic, that kind of font. It goes beyond Woody now.”)

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Guadagnino’s latest stars Julia Roberts as a college professor who is confronted with some stark realities when a student (Ayo Edebiri) accuses one of her friends (Andrew Garfield) of inappropriate behavior. The premiere was apparently divisive with critics at the festival, at least one of which asked Roberts about how she processes a narrative that the questioner saw as “reviving old arguments” about believing women when they come forward with accusations of assault. (Roberts: “I don’t think it’s just reviving an argument of women being pitted against each other or not supporting each other. There are a lot of old arguments that get rejuvenated that creates conversation… The best part of your question is that you all came out of the theater talking about it.”)

After The Hunt has already been picked up by Amazon MGM, and will arrive in the States on October 10—presumably towing a whole boatload of controversy as it goes.

[via Variety]