Luca Guadagnino is a loyal collaborator. He’s worked with Timothée Chalamet and Dakota Johnson twice, Tilda Swinton four times, but the people he’s worked with most frequently are his screenwriters. Over the years, IndieWire has spoken multiple times with Guadagnino’s go-tos, David Kajganich and Justin Kuritzkes, each time learning more about what it takes to collaborate with one of cinema’s most respected and revered filmmakers.

Kajganich is known for penning Guadagnino’s adaptations of “A Bigger Splash,” “Suspiria,” and “Bones and All,” while Kuritzkes wrote “Challengers” as a spec script, prompting the filmmaker to later ask him to help conceive the screenplay for the William S. Burroughs-inspired “Queer.” Keep reading below to find out the lessons they learned working with the subversive, yet alluring creative.

Research, Then Adapt

In a 2018 interview with IndieWire’s Jamie Righetti, Kajganich said his reimagining Dario Argento’s giallo classic “Suspiria” began with facts,...