Weekend Thread: Challengers - 15.01m

Challengers would have probably done even better pre-2020, but whatever. Civil War also passed 50m.

Only Zendaya can get this movie at least somewhat seen.

True, but when you consider how other Tennis movies have performed at the box office, Challengers results are very much on the high end. Films centered on tennis rarely break out as hits. The most commercial attempt to make a tennis movie ( Wimbledon, as a rom-com with Paul Bettany and Kristen Dunst) opened  with 7 million dollars to a 17 million dollar US Gross.

The Battle Of The Sexes, with Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carrell made 18 million dollars in it's entire US run. Challengers is easily going to outperform both films, possibly on it's opening weekend. And those films had real starpower in both their male and female leads. So for what it is, it's impressive for Zendaya.

It's fine. I was more being factious. I wasn't expecting that much from the film to begin with.

This is a flop. It has a budget of 55 million, meaning it needs to make roughly 130 million to break even which is impossible after such a weak opening weekend. The international numbers are even lower which isn't surprising since Zendaya's popularity is pretty much non-existent outside of the US.

The comparisons to arthouse tennis films are pure cope. This wasn't marketed as a tennis movie, it was marketed as steamy romance with Zendaya. It had a PR tour like a blockbuster with big premieres with its stars in several countries around the world. Comparing this to films that didn't even have half of its budget tells how desperate the attempts are to paint this failure in a positive light.

Guess Hollywood learned their lesson, instagram followers mean shit in the real world.

Since when was Wimbledon an "arthouse"  movie?

It was a mainstream romantic comedy, starring Kirsten Dunst at the height of her Bring It On and Spider-Man stardom from the producers of Notting Hill, Love Actually & Bridget Jones Diary. It was their usual formula thing, with Paul Bettany substituting for Hugh Grant.

Challengers feels like way more of a specialist/arthouse movie than Wimbledon, which was a commercial a film as you could get. The whole weird menage trois thing marketed in Challengers feels far more adult and arthouse than Wimbledon. I think the only reason it's even been sold as a mainstream thing is because Zendaya is in it. Adjusted for inflation, the budgets for Challengers and Wimbledon are in the same ballpark as well. Challengers is doing much better. 

They were both movies marketed around tennis subculture, whether as a rom-com or as a "steamy romance" as you put it. So yes, they both fall into the category of tennis movies.

The poor budgeting isn't Zendaya's problem or fault. Producers have spreadsheets and algorithms to know how these kind of films perform. At least with the US box office weekend, Zendaya delivered pretty much on the high end of what this kind of movie has shown to be able to do. The budget probably should have been halved, but again, that's not Zenday's issue. She did her job as the star, which is to open the movie.

But No Hard Feelings is not a movie most people want to get off their butts and see. It's not gonna be an Adam Sandler type classic or any type of classic at all, it ended up being heavily overshadowed by bigger movies at the year of the year, and had 0 contribution from any other talents involved. No other major actor or director or a famous book it was based on.

She gets it to 50 million. I think that's clear starpower. It's not like it's the 90s anymore also where people go out to see movies every weekend when movies were 5 bucks per visit.

They're both respectable, if you go by the 10m + opening weekend rule. Not many stars can do that. 

It tries to play in those movies' sandboxes but its not in those movies' sandboxes don't you see? Once word got around that it wasn't as good as those movies, people weren't eager to go out and see it.

Challengers is respectable for sure.

I disagree about Easy A. It's the go-to teen movie of the era. The first teen movie most people had on their minds from '10-'12 so the movie had some legs on its own unlike No Hard Feelings which to most people has no other appeal besides Lawrence. Lawrence has starpower.

Zendaya not known outside the US is a legitimate bad take. Cherry68, not a crook and avner were among the people who saw it in the first 3 days. Do any of them live in America?

Zendaya is not a movie star, and if Lawrence isn't....... I would say she has star power.  I think there's a drastic difference.


However, Zendaya can make a totally irrelevant movie at least seen.   Challengers come and go quietly without Zendaya, much like Bones and All did.   No way anyone can get a movie about tennis over 75 million.   I'd like to see who can do that.   I don't even think Jolie could do that.  Wimbledon and Battles of the Sexes and Match Point all grossed under 25 million.


But yeah... movie stars are hard to find these days with ticket prices so high and Hollywood in general in such a bad state, and general interest in movies from the above 35+ crowd so low.   It seems like the only people talking about new movies these days are people under 35.


I wouldn't even say DiCaprio is a movie star.   He's being idolized in foreign countries like he's Lionel Messi.   But that's because in foreign countries there are very few stand out actors, so the stand out actors get put on a pedestal to a higher extent than in America.   I don't think in America DiCaprio has nearly the fans he has on the internet.   Not that he doesn't have fans irl, because he does but I don't think he's some gigantitan in his command of the audience.   Not like Ford, Wayne, Cruise, Smith, Hanks, Washington, Arnold, and who am I missing?