Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers has been a major hit both with critics and at the box office, but another of the director’s movies could outperform it come award season. Challengers currently has a score of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its critical success was a major reason Zendaya set a box office record with Challengers. With both commercial and critical success, Challengers certainly benefited from Guadagnino’s creative vision, and it should be enough to secure several awards for the movie, and potentially even a few Oscars.

Guadagnino’s movies range in quality, but many of his recent films have been hits. Challengers is obviously the most recent example of his skills as a director, but earlier films like Bones and All and Call Me By Your Name have proven his track record at awards season. Challengers clearly benefited from Guadagnino’s direction, but it also has even more factors working to its advantage ahead of award season. From Challengers‘ stellar cast to its bold stylistic and musical choices, it’s already a standout in 2024, but that might not be enough to make it Guadagnino’s best of the year.

Challengers Has A Strong Chance To Get Some Oscar Nominations In 2025

Challengers stood out in several different areas. Perhaps Challengers‘ best chance at an Oscar is for Best Original Score, as the movie’s soundtrack is one of its main positives, but that isn’t the only area it excelled in. Zendaya already seems like a top contender for the Oscar for Best Actress due to her stellar performance, and her co-stars, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, are just as likely to secure Best Supporting Actor nominations. There will be only a few movies that are able to secure more nominations than Challengers, but one of them could be another movie from Challengers‘ director, Luca Guadagnino.

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer Could Be A Stronger Oscar Contender Than Challengers

Queer, a long-awaited Luca Guadagnino movie, is expected to release in 2024, as long as it can secure a distributor. Even though it doesn’t have a set release date, Queer is already expected to be a major contender at the Academy Awards, and could even receive a nomination for Best Picture. Additionally, the star of Queer, Daniel Craig, could very well receive a Best Actor nomination. Those are major awards, but they’re also just the most likely ones for Queer to win. It’s entirely possible that other awards are on the table, which would make it even stronger than Challengers.

Currently, very little is known about Queer, other than the fact it will likely secure several nominations. All that’s currently known about Queer‘s story is that it follows Daniel Craig’s character, Lee, who romantically pursues Drew Starkey’s Allerton in a struggling New Mexico town. Despite the limited information available about the movie, the fact that it has already generated such buzz about its chances at the Oscars is an incredbily promising sign. If Queer proves to be as good as it’s expected to be, it could well beat Challengers to become his strongest movie in 2024 come award season.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes