For a screenwriter, it’s hard to imagine a bigger success story than what Justin Kuritzkes experienced with “Challengers.” A playwright who had yet to break into Hollywood, Kuritzkes wrote an unapologetically R-rated erotic thriller with no ties to existing IP, only to find one of the world’s biggest movie stars and a lauded director attaching themselves to the project on the strength of his writing. It all happened thanks to producers Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connor, who spearheaded the film and turned “Challengers” into a cultural phenomenon when it opened in theaters this spring.
Kuritzkes, Pascal, O’Connor, and director Luca Guadagnino were honored with the Impact Award at the 2024 IndieWire Honors, which took place at Citizen News in Los Angeles on Thursday, December 5. Accepting the award, Kuritzkes acknowledged the rarity of such an adult-oriented film breaking through the zeitgeist in the current media landscape.
“These days, when you talk about a movie having a true cultural impact, connecting with an audience in the way that ‘Challengers’ has been lucky enough to connect, it’s often true that the official stakes are nothing less than the end of the world,” Kuritzkes said. “There are bad guys threatening to end human existence as we know it, and there are good guys who try and stop them. That’s what gets people into theaters.”
The screenwriter acknowledged that it can be daunting to release movies with smaller human stakes amid a sea of epic blockbusters, but emphasized the importance of trying anyway.
“The question we always asked ourselves was, ‘How the fuck are we supposed to compete with that?,’” he said. “How do we make people yell at the screen in the same way they do when people from one side of the multiverse pops up unexpectedly in another movie on another side of the multiverse? How do we make sure that our movie about three complicated people at this sad little tennis tournament open the door of the moviegoing public’s consciousness and says ‘Yes, we’ll sit here next to Spider-Man and Elphaba and Deadpool and, I guess, now the characters from Minecraft.’”
Kuritzkes credited his partners, explaining that a movie like “Challengers” only works when everyone is committed to the material and sincerely believes that it has the potential to resonate with audiences.
“It begins by getting Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connor to produce the hell out of this movie. To insist that it’s a commercial movie, even though on the surface it looks like a piece of adult drama,” he said. “You get there by never losing sight of the vision that will lead us to a place like this.”
Pascal echoed Kuritzkes’ sentiments, acknowledging that it’s a challenging moment for filmmakers looking to produce original work. But she encouraged IndieWire Honors attendees to take a moment to look at all of the great art that still comes out of the film industry every year as proof that hope is not lost.
“I just want to say that, yeah, things are hard right now, but maybe the movie business has always been hard,” Pascal said. “But we should be celebrating the fact that a bunch of really great movies came out this year. And we should all be proud to be part of a business that’s still making good movies.”
Watch Pascal and Kuritzkes’ full speech above, and check out all of our IndieWire Honors coverage right here.
