Challengers Movie Box Office: Against all the stereotypes that tennis-based films are not making big in the box office, Zendaya’s recent release, ‘Challengers’ has broken records. How many movie are you able to recall where tennis was the main focus of it and it made a big win in the box office? But now we have a winner.
Challengers made it’s wining shot last weekend with $15 million collection and also opening nationwide is Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company’s Unsung Hero, which earned $470,000 in Thursday previews. No doubt that this film is going to be a benchmark setter in the box office as the numbers are growing fast.
Challengers Movie Box Office
As of 29th April, 2024, the film has already crossed $16.6 million in the US & Canada combined and another $10.3 million in other territories, making it a worldwide total of $26.9 million.
In US and Canada, the film has seen a clash with other films such as Boy Kills World and Unsung Hero but despite it, we can see the ‘Challengers’ making its way to the top of the list. The film made an opening day collection of $6.2 million on its first day which includes $1.9 million in Thursday-night previews. The film has already set record in it’s first week making to the top in the bos office and marking as the best domestic opening weekend of Guadagnino’s career.
This film is an American drama, romance and sports based film directed by Luca Guadagnino. The story of the film revolves around a professional tennis champion, Mike Faist who makes a comeback with the help of his wife who role is performed by the famous Zendaya, who also happens to be a former tennis prodigy who retired after an injury. As Mike goes against an opponent, Josh O’Conor who was his former best friend and also his wife’s former lover.
Earlier, the film was expecte to release on big screen by September 2023 but was delayed due to the opening of the 80th Venice International Film Festival and SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023. Finally it made it’s way to the silver screen on March 26, 2024 in Sydney, Australia and then later next month in the US by Amazon MGM studies which was on 26th April, 2024. The film has been receiving tremendous support and praise from the critics and has crossed $26 million worldwide.
The majority of it came from night shows on Thursday, but there was also a special Imax sneak earlier this week which also added up to the overall revenue. The viewers are really impressed by the love triangle being shown with Zendaya as a tennis playe where she plays opposite to Mike Faist (her husband) and Josh O’Connor (her former lover).
She looks smart, seductive and bristling with that tennis player look and fans are in love with that. The overall screenplay and storytelling done in the film shows the excellence Luca Guadagnino has shown to the audience. Adding up to the story of comeback in the film, the love-triangle drama gives the perfect twist and shows the rivalry on the tennis court of two former best friends against their desire for a self-possessed woman Tashi, whose hunger to win is not diminished by a knee injury that cuts short her own career.
Although the film ends with an ambiguous ending with Tashi watching Art and Patrick battle it out on the court. At the end of the film, it seemed that they have found each other but the question arises here is that will there be a sequel of it? Have they set the stakes for another game? Answers to these can be found in the interaction between the director with the Entertainment weekly platform where he mentioned that the ending was meant to round up the whole story instead of planning for around round.
The news of this film came to light in February 2022 that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios which is commonly know as MGM studies and is a subsidiary of Amazon has landed the film which is going to be direct by Luca with Zendaya, Josh and Mike in the lead roles and adding further to this, it was also known by an interview that Zendaya is also working on this project as a producer.
Filming of this film began on 3rd May 2022, in Boston, one of the most expensive cities in the country and one without a huge local film industry which led to increase in the production budget. To deliver their best shots for the film, all 3 of them, i.e. Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor spent 3 months training with professional tennis player who eventually becam a coach, Brad Gilbert, was also worked as a a consultant on this film. Most of the scenes are shots around the neighbourhoods of Back Bay and East Boston.
The cinematography has been taken care by Savombhu Mukdeeprom who definitely has done a great job and the overall filing concluded on 26th June, 2022. If they would have planned to film in Atlanta or anywhere else than Boston, then it would have costed them less in production. Adding further to this, it was a covid lockdown period which further increased the budget due to strict guidelines and regulation which was mandatory to be followed.
Earlier this film was planned to skip the silver screen release and directly stream to amazon prime but later it was decided to show it’s impression on big screen and the online streaming was delay. In the recent trends, we have seen many films making directly to the streaming platform like Amazon, Netflix and others and skipping the silver screen premier but no doubt, the production crew of Challengers have taken the right call by delaying the online streaming as this film is reaching new heights with its numbers.
