Zendaya's Challengers Has Officially Been Pushed Back To An April 2024 Theatrical Release
Luca Guadagnino's sexy tennis movie will not be on the fall festival circuit after all: News has broken via The Hollywood Reporter that the Zendaya-led drama "Challengers" is no longer set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival. It also will not hit theaters this September as originally planned. Instead, its theatrical release has been bumped all the way to April of next year.
"Challengers" already has MGM on board as its distributor, making it easy for the film to sidestep the upcoming festival season and take the theatrical route instead. This decision comes in the wake of the ongoing Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes, the former of which asks actors to not promote new projects in the midst of an ongoing fight for fair wages, streaming residuals, and protections against artificial intelligence, among other things. As one source put it to THR, "How do you go to Venice without Zendaya supporting?" Apparently, MGM doesn't want to find out, as the movie is now being benched until next spring.
The release date shuffle continues
The move from MGM (a studio represented in the strike by the AMPTP) pushes "Challengers" out of the running for this year's Oscar race, and is yet another signal that execs seem to be planning to let the strike drag on for months. SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said earlier this week that the AMPTP doesn't seem open to negotiating at the moment, telling CBS News, "We said we would start talking to them immediately. But they're punishing us. They don't want to talk to us." Instead, the heads of industry seem to be speaking through pointed release date shuffles. In addition to the "Challengers" move, a recent report indicated that several Warner Bros. films, including "Dune: Part Two" and "The Color Purple," may also end up pushed to 2024.
"Challengers" marks the first collaboration between "Euphoria" star Zendaya and "Call Me By Your Name" filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. Zendaya is set to play a tennis pro turned coach named Tashi, whose husband (Mike Faist, "West Side Story") ends up competing against her former lover and his former best friend (Josh O'Connor, "The Crown"). The Venice Film Festival will now open in late August with "Comandante," a war drama from Italian filmmaker Edoardo De Angelis. International films will likely get more time in the spotlight in general as the strikes wear on here in the States, as Reuters recently noted that streamers like Netflix can fall back on their robust catalog of international productions without hiring SAG actors.
The majority of the 80th Venice International Film Festival has yet to be announced, but will be made public on July 25, 2023. "Challengers" will now hit theaters on April 26, 2024.