2023 Rewind: Hunky Drew Starkey Cast as Daniel Craig's Object of Affection in Upcoming 'Queer'

Watch Drew Starkey talk about thirst-tweets.

This piece is part of EDGE's 2023 Rewind series. We're reaching into our archives and sharing some of our favorite stories from the past year.

The leads in Luca Guadagnino adaptation of William S. Burroughs "Queer" cast has been solidified, writes Variety. Joining Daniel Craig is "Outer Banks" star Drew Starkey, who plays as a younger man with whom he becomes madly infatuated.

"The boldly ambitious indie film is set to start shooting this month at Rome's refurbished Cinecittà Studios where the Mexico City-set movie will be filmed in its entirety," says Variety.

American playwright Justin Kuritzkes has written the adaptation. This continues his collaboration with Guadagnino, having penned his upcoming sexy comedy "Challengers" that stars Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, and Mike Fast, – which has now completed post production.

"Queer" was written in the early 1950s, but wasn't published until 1985. It was Burroughs's second novel (after "Junkie.") "Set in decadent Mexico City of the 1940s, it's the semi-autobiographical story of Lee who has fled from a drug bust in New Orleans," Variety adds. "In Mexico City Lee wanders around the city's clubs and bars populated by American expatriate college students, discharged soldiers, and other characters on the edge of society. He becomes infatuated with a discharged American Navy serviceman named Allerton, a drug user, who, though indifferent to his advances, eventually relents – but only enough to make Lee's sexual yearnings become even more of an obsession. Eventually they go on a trip to South America in search of a drug known as ;Yage' which Lee believes will make him psychic."

With its use of black humor, the novel is seen a precursor to Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," his masterpiece that was adapted to the screen by David Cronenberg.

Variety writes that the film will mark the most prominent film role to date for Starkey, 29, who is known globally for his role on Netflix's "Outer Banks" as Rafe Cameron, the handsome often violent teen with a killer streak, a cocaine addiction, and an identity crisis.

Craig's character Benoit Blanc in the "Knives Out" series (from writer/director Rian Johnson) was recently outed in the franchise's second film, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" when it was learned that his companion is Hugh Grant. Previously, Variety notes, Craig played the gay love interest character in British director John Maybury's 1998 drama "Love Is the Devil – Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon." The experimental biopic, which screened in Cannes, is about the destructive drug and alcohol-infused relationship between painter Francis Bacon, played by Derek Jacobi, and George Dyer (Craig) a younger small-time criminal who became the artists' muse.

Check out pics of Starkey: