Justin Kuritzkes had an incredible 2024.
The playwright and novelist made the leap to Hollywood screenwriting when, in his debut film starring Zendaya, Challengerswhich opened in April 2024 to excellent reviews and high grosses at the box office.
Just a few months later, in November, his second film, queeran adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella, hit theaters and immediately garnered attention at the awards for Daniel Craig’s devastating lead performance.
Both films were directed by Kuritzkes friend and collaborator Luca Guadagnino (Call me by your name), put the 34-year-old Kuritzkes, born in Los Angeles, on the map as one of the most sought-after writers in Hollywood. The duo is reportedly working on a superhero movie for DC Studios based on Sgt. Rock character. Ace Challengers and queer continue to dominate awards season (both films recently competed at the 2025 Golden Globes, where Challengers won because of his score), PEOPLE spoke with Kuritzkes to discuss his meteoric rise.
Challengers.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures
A year ago you were a playwright. You have now blossomed into one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood. How did you stay grounded during this time?
First of all, that’s really nice of you to say all that. I mean, I think being a playwright for 10 years really helps keep you grounded because nobody can make a living as a playwright. Most of the playwrights I know and most of the people whose work really inspires me, and my favorite writers in New York, are all people who have day jobs. And the whole time I was a playwright, I would write “administrative assistant” or “SAT tutor” on my tax returns because that’s what I was. Now I write “screenwriter”, but that does not mean that I believe that I am one or that it is any more real than being a playwright. I just feel immense gratitude that people can watch… people can experience my work. It’s really everything you hope for.
Has writing for film always been your goal or did it just come to you? Challengers was created?
No, film was my first love. I was honestly a movie fan before I was a fan of anything else. But then I fell in love with the theater towards the end of high school, where I started writing plays, and that in a way left an imprint on me for many years. But I always watched movies and thought about making movies. Then Challengerswhen the idea was presented to me it was so clear that it wasn’t a play or a book, because it was a picture of these three people on this tennis court and the geometry between them and the way they looked at each other. It felt like a spaghetti western to me, more than something coming from the tongue. I knew it had to be a movie, and then I knew I had to write it.
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Challengers LA premiere.
Monica Schipper/Getty
I’ve read that you’re not a big fan of tennis, but you’ve become one in research Challengers. But how did you come to have this three-way relationship, whatever you call it? What was that central dynamic inspired by?
Tennis is a very controlled sport and is very much a box sport. You must serve in one box, the ball must stay in several boxes. There are all these rules about how to fight this fight. Because that’s what it is: it’s a battle. And it has to do with boxing because boxing is a combat sport, but boxing is about trying to touch another person, and tennis is about trying not to touch another person. That seemed very powerful to me.
The other thing about tennis that led to the love triangle is that there is this myth that tennis is an individual sport because you spend the entire match looking at shots of two people’s faces and bodies. But then they always switch to the box and very quickly you become aware that no tennis player is alone in some sense. Because they have this whole support system of people who are as invested in the game as the players. That started to be really interesting to me, thinking about someone sitting in a box and who can’t play anymore, and somehow has to find a way to play again. From there, Zendaya’s Tashi character was born and the dynamic started to come.
Challengers Review: Zendaya stars in a sensational, sexy comedy about love and tennis
Structure Challengers is so unique. Take me through your process as you have it all mapped out. Did you have post-its around your office to keep track of deadlines?
That. I mean, I got the idea for the movie a few years before I actually started writing it. I was writing a book. So I had to think a lot about the film, I started taking notes and mapping things out. I knew a few things right away, and that was that the desire to write the film in the first place came from this question I was asking myself as a tennis fan, which was, “What would make tennis even better?” The answer to that question was that it would be better if I could know exactly what was at stake for everyone at every moment of the game. It’s already kind of a structure that in this day and age you’ll throw people right into a tennis match, and then they’ll gradually understand why these people are looking at each other like this thing is so important.
In terms of the time sequence, I didn’t know exactly where I was going to go back, but I knew that the film would take us roughly from when these characters were 18 to when they were in their 30s. Because that is the life span of an athlete. You can imagine a sports career as a kind of mini life, and you are born when you are of age and can start making money from you, and you are dead when you are useless, when you are 35, if you are lucky.
That was very interesting to me, especially as someone who had just turned 30 and was a writer. Because I was thinking about how it would feel to be my age and already over the hill, already at the end of my career. When I think about Zendaya, who is this brilliant young actress, I want to know what she’ll be doing when she’s 70. That’s so exciting to me. Or what Josh O’Connor or Mike Faist will do when they’re 80 years old. That was really fascinating to me.
Fans Challengers have been discussing the ending since it came out. Where do you think the characters end up?
I hope this isn’t a frustrating answer for you, but what I really like about it is that by the time everyone is really talking to each other at the end and all their cards are on the table and the guys are playing the best tennis of their lives and Tashi plays tennis his own way for the first time in years, for me at that moment I got what I wanted from the movie. And the match is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who wins because we’ve moved on from that.
What they all end up doing in life, I don’t know. I guess it’s fun for the audience to think of their own answers to that question. As for me, I always like that in movies, that these characters exist when we meet them and cease to exist when the movie ends. Even if a film imagines a person’s entire life, from cradle to grave, it is always an artificial container for a kind of chaos of life and interpersonal relationships. You only ever get a small window into something much bigger. So if people want to fill in the rest, that’s great. But as far as I’m concerned, I got what I came for.
What is it about you and Luca and your collaborative process that led you to make another film together?
Luca is someone I’ve been a fan of since he made movies. He is someone whose films really mean a lot to me. So the idea of making two films and being a part of that filmography is something I still have to remind myself of the immensity of. Because a filmography is all you have as a director, and even if you make films as fast and furiously as Luca does, you can only make so many. So it’s amazing for me to be partially responsible for two of those movies.
I think, with all that said, what really surprised me when I met him was that he just felt like one of my people. He felt like a friend I’ve known for a long time, and he felt like someone who spoke the same language as me. Which means we just didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining to each other. We were kind of excited about a lot of the same things in the movies and pretty quickly we had a shorthand. The other thing that’s amazing about Luca as a collaborator is that he’s the rare director, and especially the rare director of his caliber, who not only invites the writer to be on set, but demands it. He was a real champion for me as part of the process, which was something that Amy [Pascal] and Rachel [O’Connor] and Zendaya, the other producers, were also excited.
But Luca really insisted on it: “You’ll be with me all the time in pre-production and rehearsals and on set, and if something changes in the script, you’ll do it.” It’s an amazing gift, especially for someone who has never written a movie before and never had a job on a movie set before. That’s why I was on the set for Challengersand one day he just gave me a book for queer and said, “Read this tonight and tell me if you will adapt it for me.” When the person who is the director you love and the friend you love tell you to do it, you do it. I read the book that night, called him and said yes, and that was it.
Can you recall a specific or memorable interaction you had with one of the actors, either on set queer or Challengers? Actors must love the opportunity to turn to you, the writer, to help them come up with characters and answer questions.
I will tell you a story about the actors and Luca, and that is, I remember there is a scene Challengers where Josh O’Connor is on a date at a hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, and doesn’t realize that Tashi and Art are staying there, and runs into each other. I wrote that scene and we got to the end and the scene officially ended when Tashi got back in the elevator and Josh went back on the date and we didn’t see anything else. We’re sitting there and it’s like 3 in the morning, it’s a night shoot, and Luca just kind of nonchalantly says, “I think the scene could use a button.” I said, “Okay,” and he said, “We’re going to do a scene, it’s going to take us five minutes to set up the camera, come up with something that’s going to make everyone in the theater laugh.” And so I said, “Okay.”
I’m thinking, “What could he have done? What could he have done?” Then it finally occurs to me that you should just try to kiss her, date. So I went over to Josh and Hailey [Gates]who plays Helen, the woman he’s on a date with, and I said to them, “So Josh is just going to kiss you now.” Without hesitation, they both said, “That’s great. We’re doing it.” And we managed to do it in one go and it’s in the movie.
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Source: HIS Education