Sydney, Paris, now Rome: Luca Guadagnino’s match moved to the Italian capital on Monday as the highly anticipated Warner Bros. film Challengers continued its world tour.
A film about love, relationships and tennis starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, the feature is the eighth film from the director of Call Me by Your Name and Bones and All. It was presented for its Roman premiere in the setting of Piazza Barberini, behind the Via Veneto that gave birth to La Dolce Vita.
Challengers follows the story of the young tennis hopeful Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) at the center a love triangle with two friends and fellow athletes, Art (Faist) and Patrick (O’Connor). Due to a serious knee injury, Tashi has to give up her career and become Art’s coach, and the pair have since gotten married. After a series of winning matches, she wants to enroll Art in the Challenger Tour, in which she will have to face Patrick, Tashi’s ex-boyfriend.
The erotic and emotional tension between the characters is at the heart of Guadagnino’s film. “We had an intimacy coordinator which was fantastic and very helpful, because it was important that we felt safe,” Zendaya recounted on the red carpet of the Italian premiere.
She elaborated by talking about the eroticism and sensuality of the work: “I spoke with my colleagues so that we could find a way to feel at ease. We played tennis together, we went out together, we rehearsed together. We got to bond and feel good with each other,” said the Dune actress, responding to a question from THR Roma.
Faist agreed, saying, “We were able to spend time together during rehearsals and beyond, especially with Josh. We were able to get to know each other as people before we could get into the film. We created a real friendship that created the basis of the film.”
O’Connor — in his second collaboration with an Italian director after his experience in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, for which he is nominated for the David di Donatello 2024 as best leading actor — added, “It was an honor to be directed by Luca. The script was great, as was the cast and being able to work with Mike and Zendaya. To be honest, what attracted me to accepting the role of Patrick is that he is so different from me.”
When asked in what way, he said, “I don’t really know, just different. That’s the beauty of being an actor.” O’Connor will also be in Guadagnino’s next film, the adaptation of Separate Rooms (Camere Separate) by the Italian writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli.
The film is written by screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, to whom Guadagnino has also entrusted the writing of his next work to be released later this year, Queer, whose premiere is contested between the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. Challengers was originally supposed to be the opening film of last year’s Venice Film Festival, but its release was postponed due to the writers and actors strikes that hit Hollywood in 2023.
Producer Rachel O’Connor explained that the biggest challenge in making the film was the production time, as “we had the script ready that Luca was in love with, but we really had a very short window to shoot with Zendaya, who is also a producer and brought her strong work ethic to the film, but who also had to work on Dune.”
There was an additional ingredient that allowed Challengers to come to life: “Passion. Everyone was completely involved in the project and absolutely wanted it to become a reality,” O’Connor added.
After months of postponement, Challengers will finally be released in Italian theaters April 24, and in the U.S. on April 26. The film is produced by MGM and Pascal Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros.