Challengers director Luca Guadagnino has revealed why his Zendaya-led film includes a nod to Spider-Man – and it’s nothing to do with the actor’s connection to the franchise.
Written by playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi, a professional tennis player-turned-coach who becomes the focus of a love triangle between two friends and sporting rivals, played by Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.
In the film, Tashi’s young daughter Lily interrupts a heated argument between Zendaya and Faist’s characters to ask if she can watch the animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse instead of the tennis match playing on their TV.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Guadagnino said the Spider-Man “in-joke” was unintentional and the decision had actually been for production ease.
Guadagnino explained getting rights for another title to be used in a movie is “very complicated” so, he’d asked the film’s producer, Amy Pascal, if they could use one of her catalogue’s projects.
The director then had the choice between using the Facebook drama The Social Network (2010), the Pentagon Papers thriller The Post (2017), or the animation Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
“[Lily’s a girl; she’s not going to choose to watch The Social Network or The Post ,” Guadagnino said. “But maybe she’s going to watch a Spider-Man cartoon.
“Now I realise that it sounded like an in-joke,” he added. “Which, you know, the unconscious guides us all the time.”
Fans who watched Challengers over its opening weekend (26 April) rushed to share their reactions to the unexpected Spider-Man reference on social media.
