Glamour's senior west coast editor Jessica Radloff said it first: Challengers is set to be the .That's certainly the case here in the office. Some staffers loved it (hi, hello), while others were disappointed or worse—bored.
20.04.2024 - 01:04 / variety.com
Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” is sweaty, sexy and full of angst. The film, which hits theaters April 26, centers on a love triangle between three tennis players with deeply competitive spirits both in the game and off the court.
In it, former doubles partners Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) face off in a challengers match years after they fell out over their pursuit of a promising young star named Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). Tensions mount as they play each other in a finals game with a weight much heavier than a grand prize trophy, and as the film cuts between time periods, the importance of the win becomes vastly heavier. A pivotal device in the film is the score itself, composed by two-time Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Inspired by Berlin techno and ‘90s rave music, the score amplifies the stress and strain of the scenes at hand, lending an urgency to the film that already teeters on the precipice of anxiety. “‘Challengers’ had two elements that were very powerful in terms of sound,” says Guadanigno in a clip premiering exclusively on Variety. “One was the erotic crunchy pulse of tennis.
The racket swinging, the ball hitting, bones crushing. And on the other hand, the pulse and energy of the score.” Reznor and Ross had previously worked with Guadagnino on 2022’s “Bones and All,” and once the film wrapped, they received an email from the director mentioning his next project. “The way he described ‘Challengers’ was on a one-sentence email,” recalls Ross.
Glamour's senior west coast editor Jessica Radloff said it first: Challengers is set to be the .That's certainly the case here in the office. Some staffers loved it (hi, hello), while others were disappointed or worse—bored.
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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about Challengers.
A central scene in director Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers wasn’t in Justin Kuritzkes’ original script.
As an actress and executive producer, Zendaya is already a multi-hyphenate, but she’s not quite ready to climb into a director’s chair. IndieWire reports (via The New York Times) that the “Challengers” star needs more time before she directs her first project. But when that day comes, Luca Guadagnino will say, “I told you so.” READ MORE: ‘Challengers’ Review: Zendaya Rules This Love Triangle “I’m overly conscious of everything else around me,” Zendaya told the publication in an interview for Guada’s new tennis drama, in theaters today.
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Amazon MGM Studios’ Challengers, starring Zendaya and directed by Luca Guadagnino, made $1.9M in previews, a figure $100K shy of what Universal’s Cocaine Bear did. The tennis sexy romcom is hoping to open to $15M for the weekend.
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From almost all accounts, it seems like Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has another hit on his hands with “Challengers,” a new tennis drama from MGM Studios that’s actually more of a love-triangle romance bundled into the sports genre. Starring Zendaya (Marvel’s “Spider-Man” franchise and the “Dune” series), Josh O’Connor (“Dr.
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Zendaya not only stars in Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers but is also a producer in the film written by Justin Kuritzkes.
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Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Anyone who’s ever played tennis knows the game starts with love and escalates fast. In Luca Guadagnino’s hip, sexy and ridiculously overheated “Challengers,” the rivals are former doubles partners Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), best friends since the age of 12, who went their separate ways after both players fell for the same woman. Patrick got there first, but Art wound up marrying her — and their sense of competition has only intensified since.
Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Netflix has acquired “Rather,” the documentary about veteran journalist Dan Rather‘s landmark career in news. The film, which premieres April 24 on the streamer, utilizes the story of of Rather’s life on television to also explore the evolution of broadcast journalism, the troubles a free press now faces, along with the slide of American society from hard-fought advances in social justice and democratic freedoms.
In Challengers, Luca Guadagnino serves up a film that is as much about the volleys of human emotion as it is about the physical rallies on the tennis court.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have enlisted Boys Noize to remix their score for the upcoming feature film Challengers – listen to the half-hour mix below.The celebrated German producer and DJ Boys Noize has been hand-selected by Reznor and Ross to “deconstruct and subsequently reimagine” their propulsive, electronic score, and the new version mixes nine tracks into one continuous set.Listen to ‘Challengers [Mixed]’ below:Challengers is the latest film from director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All), and stars Zendaya as a former tennis prodigy turned coach who tries to redeem her husband’s (The Crown’s Josh O’Connor) losing streak when he takes on her ex-boyfriend. The film is out on April 26.Speaking about his new mix of the score, Boys Noize has said: “It’s been a fun challenge to turn this into one fluid experience and take it even further by redesigning the tracks, creating new elements and changing certain parts – especially on ‘Compress / Repress,’ which turns super epic in the end.
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