Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. Among my friends both in the corporeal world and on the internet, Challengers is regarded as a modern classic and a clear choice for one of the ten best films of the year. And, of course, after all that, no Best Picture nomination, either. How could the Academy overlook a film like Challengers? Let me try to explain. Think of the way Jon M. Chu, Cynthia Erivo, and Ariana Grande honed the message that Wicked was not just a remarkably successful capitalization of Broadway IP but a tribute to radical joy.
A caveat: A frothy melodrama like Challengers was always going to have a tougher hill to climb than, say, Everything Everywhere All at Once , which underneath its comic mania hid an Academy-friendly tale of a family coming together. Challengers was originally set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which would have given the film a jolt of Euro flair that often scans as classy and prestige-y.
With no Zendaya on hand to offer promotional support, MGM delayed Challengers until the following spring. After the strike wrapped up, the film eschewed a festival run and opened wide in April, nine months before the eventual Oscar nominations. On the internet, Challengers was a cultural sensation. Once fall began, it was time for the pivot.
Now, there are many ways an early-season release can reintroduce itself to voters, but almost all of them require appearances from the talent. To be clear, Challengers did a bit of this campaigning, too. But her partner that night was Denis Villeneuve, not Guadagnino, which speaks to a unique hurdle faced by the tennis drama: Its principal players were all juggling multiple projects.
Had both movies come from the same studio, perhaps some sort of timeshare could have worked out, but Challengers was released by MGM while Queer was A Of course, even if Challengers had pushed its release date to May, played in competition at Cannes, and brought back the Concorde to enable Mike Faist to attend the Hamptons, Middleburg, and Mill Valley film festivals, that still may not have been enough. I know this because another film did everything right this season and still wound up with the same number of Oscar nominations as Challengers β Babygirl.
