“Challengers” is a sports romance movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor. The movie was directed and produced by Luca Guadagnino as well as produced by Zendaya, Amy Pascal, and Rachel O’Conner. The movie trailer hit 7.2 million views before the release date on April 26, 2024. Challengers had a 15 million dollar opening weekend landing at the top of the North American box office.
The plot of this movie follows a girl named Tashi who was a professional player, and after an injury to her ACL, she became a coach to her husband. She started his career by taking him on as a student and turned him into a world-famous grand slam champion. She got him out of the habit of losing every game into playing in the challenger event. This kickstarted him into the tennis world. The plot thickens when he realizes he has to play his ex-best friend and his wife’s ex-boyfriend in a match.
The inspiration comes from the screenwriter, Justin Kurizkes wanting to learn more about the sport and the intimacy behind the players, he told TODAY, “If I could know exactly what was at stake for each player at every moment in the match,” he says, “Somebody could be whispering in my ear, not just like, ‘Oh, he’s upset because he missed that serve,’ but, ‘Here’s the real reason why he’s upset. Here’s why her face looks like that in the crowd.'”
Apart from the inspiration Zendaya felt when she got into the role is Tashi she felt even more in-depth about the character. Her stylist, Law Roach, told Vogue, “The movie gave her this real confidence, like, Okay, let me put it all on and go out there and give this to the world, and then let me come home and take it all off and become myself again.”
The Challengers movie received a relevantly higher rating, on the review aggregator website, of 83/100 for a Metacritic review, a weighted average of public reviews from 60 different submissions. The movie also received a user score of 6.4/10 from 94 reviews. With these higher averaged statistics, the movie has been seen as a more anticipated watch for viewers.
