Playwright Justin Kuritzkes knows how lucky he is to be enjoying the rollout of his first effort at writing a movie, Luca Guadagnino’s spicy tennis romp, Challengers.
“When you write a script on spec, you're really just writing it for yourself and you have no idea who's going to eventually collaborate on it with you,” says Kuritzkes. “And in the case of this movie, it all came together incredibly fast, to the point that from the time I had finished the first draft of the screenplay, to the time we were in pre-production, it was only a couple months,”
Kuritzkes talks about how Challengers, starring Zendaya, was inspired by a particular US Open match that turned him into a tennis obsessive. He also shares how he and his wife Celine Song — known for her 2023 Oscar-nominated, debut feature film Past Lives — manage to keep their work separate from their relationship. Plus, he dives into some of his quirkier creative efforts over the years.