Zendaya has a lot going on at the moment. She’s taking on an integral part in Dune: Part Two, which will begin a gruelling, months-long shoot somewhere in the desert this summer. She’s also got another season of Euphoria, arguably the biggest TV show in the world right now, to worry about after that. Yet remarkably, she’s still found the time to squeeze in a little arthouse flick with Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino before she is required to fulfil her commitments on those projects. You have to respect the grind.
And Challengers sounds pretty juicy. Zendaya plays the lead, Tashi, a former tennis player-turned-coach who has reversed the fortunes of her no 1 student Art, who also happens to be her husband, portrayed by West Side Story's Film Twitter heartthrob Mike Faist. When Art goes through a bad run of losses, she makes him enrol in a low-rung “Challenger” tournament, where he winds up facing off against Patrick, Tashi’s ex, played by Josh O’Connor. It looks super hot, and super soapy. We're into it.
Great movies about tennis are pretty rare – unless you count loosely-related joints like The Royal Tennenbaums and Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train. For the most part, the ones that stick out in the memory are noughties duds like Woody Allen’s Match Point and Wimbledon. But last year, Will Smith changed the game with King Richard, a brilliant and moving biopic about the rise of the Williams sisters.
Just in time for our own ménage-à-trois at Wimbledon in a few weeks (Murray and Djokovic, we're free if you are — psst, are they even still playing?) the trailer for Challengers has finally hit the court. If there was any question as to what they're gonna serve up for us tonally, Rihanna's “S&M” provides the soundtrack. We're bringing the leather and cat o' nine-tails. Maybe it's just because modern cinema is a barren landscape of sexless puritanism but hey, this looks hot!
Here's everything else we know about Challengers.
The Challengers trailer serves up sex, strife and so much plot
Look, love the idea of Challengers, love the prospect of a new Guadagnino movie arriving imminently, love shots of Zendaya getting her neck chowed down on by two hotties (deserved), but did whoever cut this trailer need to reveal the entire plot? It's the worst trailer-cutting impulse and serves not to tease you into the cinema but puts you off going entirely, because you just feel, “Eh, I've already seen the good bits!”
Anywho. The trailer expands on what we already knew about Challengers from interviews and the official log line: Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist are two tennis pros who really, really fancy Zendaya, and have done since they were best pals at college.
Zendaya, for her part, was a tennis prodigy — the next Serena Williams, if you will — who had to retire before her career really kicked off because of an injury sustained on the court. She then marries Faist's character, Art; the trailer suggests this isn't just a gesture of love so much as a way of vicariously continuing her career through him as his ruthlessly demanding coach. This is why they say keep business and romance separate!
O'Connor's character, Patrick, comes back into the fore at a local tennis tournament the two ex-besties enrol in (a “Challenger” contest in pro lingo). It's also called Challengers, then, because they're vying for Zendaya's love. Don't you love a double entendre? And catch those tennis ball POV shots… you've done it again, Luca.
Watch the trailer below.
Challengers is set to hit the court in September
Those rumours of a Venice Film Festival premiere in the autumn are looking more accurate by the day, now that Challengers has been officially revealed to release on 15 September. What a way to cap off a summer of love.
