Zendaya’s big year is going from strength to strength on this insane Dune: Part Two press tour, but let’s not forget there’s ANOTHER Zendaya press tour in just two months. This is the definition of “step on our necks and don’t let up”.
Challengers opens April 26, and in a move usually reserved for popcorn movies, it’s opening almost simultaneously around the world on that day (a few territories open April 25, and Australia opens on April 24—good for them, the Aussies almost never get US films before the US). Originally, Challengers was supposed to open in the rather unsexy month of September, but it was delayed by the strikes and, apparently, that gave someone at distributor Amazon MGM (working with Warner Bros. for the international release) time to rethink their strategy and position Challengers as a major summer movie.
Maybe someone at Warners gave MGM the head’s up that Dune: Part Two is going to be HUGE, and they’ll benefit from a box office bounce after the fact—part of Focus Features’ plan for The Bikeriders opening in June, is no doubt to capitalize on Austin Butler’s post-Dune popularity, too—but I also wonder if films like Challengers—original, grown up, character-driven—might be part of an overall shift in how we define “summer movies”. The last time the Hollywood studio system went into freefall was the late 1960s, when the last remnants of the old studio system collapsed, and that birthed the indie revolution of the 1970s.
Back then, sure, there were Jaws and Star Wars and Superman, but films like The Turning Point, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, The Deer Hunter, The Sting, and Lady Sings the Blues all appeared in the top 10 for the years they were released. And that’s just a very slim picking of films from the 70s—that decade was a pretty solid mix of character-driven dramas like The Godfather and big studio fare like The Poseidon Adventure dominating the box office (they actually went #1 and #2 in 1972).
So maybe, in the vacuum created by superhero movies’ current struggles and general chaos among the studios after the streaming bubble burst, there is room for films like Challengers to be summer blockbusters? Certainly, Zendaya has never been more popular, and the latest trailer is firmly positioning the film as HER movie, stating, “Her game. Her rules.” The soundtrack is “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado, and the trailer is very much focused on Zendaya jerking around her “little white boys”, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. The first trailer made this look like a sexy sports movie, like The Cutting Edge but with threesomes, but this trailer makes it look like she might murder those boys. Whatever, I’m here for it.
Challengers looks GREAT. And I cannot WAIT to see Zendaya’s Fashion World Tour: Part Two in April. Will it be sporty fashion, or will she go full femme fatale?
