Zendaya and Josh O'Connor to Star in a Luca Guadagnino Tennis-Themed Drama

Even before Call Me By Your Name came out in 2017 (and was eventually nominated for four Academy Awards), director Luca Guadagnino was talking about his eventual plans for a sequel, possibly to be made in 2020 (which obviously didn’t happen), and probably reuniting its stars Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer (another thing that might not happen).

[caption id="attachment_23" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Zendaya – ‘Euphoria: Season 2’ Premiere[/caption]

The delays in making that sequel made apparently haven’t slowed down Guadagnino otherwise, as he is currently in post-production on a cannibalism drama called Bones and All and is already moving on to a romantic tennis drama for MGM called Challengers.

The stars of Challengers will include Zendaya (whose recent roles include both Spider-Man: No Way Home and HBO Max’s Euphoria), Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles in Netflix’s The Crown), and Mike Faist, who plays the key role of Riff in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.

Zendaya will play a tennis player-turned-coach who has transformed her husband (Faist) into a famous world champion, who finds himself having to compete in a “Challenger” event against a much lower ranked player who also happens to be his wife’s ex-boyfriend. Challengers first came to notice as one of the screenplays featured on the 2021 Black List of Unproduced Screenplays.