Zendaya in Challengers
The repercussions of the ongoing actors’ strike in Hollywood are becoming more apparent as the 80th Venice Film Festival nears. Two weeks after Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers starring Zendaya was revealed as the opener of the prestigious event, organizers have announced that the movie has now pulled out of the schedule.
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According to the film festival, the reason cited is the Sag-Aftra (Screen Actors Guild) strike, which saw actors join the Writers Guild of America in the protest against unfair pay and generative AI. Due to the strike, a number of productions have halted, as have promotions of films and series by their actors. “After thoughtful consideration with our partners, and given the parameters that Sag-Aftra has outlined for its membership, we have made the difficult decision to withdraw Challengers from this year’s Venice International Film Festival,” the statement from the film’s distributor MGM reads. “We look forward to celebrating the film when we can do so with our ensemble cast, director Luca Guadagnino and the filmmaking team at a later date.”
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Starring Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist alongside Zendaya, Challengers is a romance drama telling the story of a tennis coach involved in a messy love triangle. It had been scheduled to screen at the festival’s opening night on August 30, before playing in theaters from September 15. Instead, Comandante by Edoardo De Angelis will now have its global premiere during the opening of the biennale at the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema. The Italian feature film is based on a true story about the rescue of 26 shipwrecked Belgians during World War II by a submarine skipper played by Pierfrancesco Favino.
The Venice Film Festival is also considering an alternate plan in the event that more American actors and films leave the schedule. According to sources close to the biennale’s director Alberto Barbera, fest programmers have been told that the 80th edition of the event “will be Pan-European.” The full lineup of the festival is set to be revealed via a press conference on July 25.
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