Everything There Is To Know About Zendaya’s Upcoming Movie, Challengers

10 months ago

Zendaya is serving a new tennis flick this spring

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Everything There Is To Know About Zendaya’s Upcoming Movie, Challengers

While Zendya stirs up headlines on the Dune: Part Two press tour, our eyes are turning to another film she has in the pipeline: Challengers. Here’s everything there is to know about the movie, plus when we can expect to see those steamy scenes in the cinema.

Challengers: Everything We Know So Far

While director Luca Guadagnino is famously fond of Timothee Chalamet (who he worked with on Call Me By Your Name and Bones & All), Zendaya is the Dune star of choice when it comes to his next film, Challengers. Set in the world of professional tennis, expect high octane sports spliced with a steamy love triangle. Delicious.

Zendaya stars as Tashi and Josh O’Connor as Patrick in director Luca Guadagnino’s CHALLENGERS

What Happens In Challengers?

Challengers follows Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a plucky tennis prodigy who makes no apologies for her game, who captures the attention of best friends Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist). Flash forward a number of years and Tashi is now a coach, grappling to create a new strategy for her husband, Art, who is on a losing streak. Her efforts take a surprising turn when he must face off against Patrick, the estranged former best friend of Art, who Tashi has a history of her own with. As pasts and presents collide, tensions run high, and Tashi must consider what it will cost to win.

Sounds intense and incredibly sporty. As we learned in the trailer, though, this film will be half sport, half relationship drama, keeping a close eye on the wants and desires of the core trio. If you recognise director Luca Guadagnino’s name, it’s probably because he is also the man behind Call Me By Your Name – and the steamy trailer hints that his famously intimate portrayal of love will appear in Challengers, too. As he recently told IndieWire, ‘I think those three characters in [Challengers] are beautifully complex and really fucked-up people that I love very much. And a sports film, why not?’

We can also expect to see Zendaya in a new light. ‘I felt like it was a good step into a more, I guess you could say, “grown-up” role and into that next phase,’ she recently told Elle. ‘It was a little bit scary to take on, which I think is a good feeling. To be like, “Ooh, can I do this?”. You could run from that feeling and stay safe and comfortable, or you can go, “You know what, fuck it.”’