Zendaya fulfills strange Spider-Man ‘prophecy’ with Challengers
Warner Bros.All three leading ladies in the Spider-Man movies have followed a bizarre tennis prophecy, thanks to Zendaya’s role in Challengers.
Before picking up a tennis racket, Zendaya played MJ in the MCU’s Spider-Man movies. However, her Challengers led to a meme that revealed a strange trend: Zendaya, Emma Stone, and Kirsten Dunst have all headlined major tennis movies.
On Good Morning America, she was shown the meme and joked, “I have seen this. I don’t know! We were joking, I was like, maybe it’s just some prophecy that I need to fulfill.”
The meme revealed that Zendaya, Emma Stone, and Kirsten Dunst have all played leading roles in a tennis movie. It’s also a coincidence that all three actors have also played the love interest of Spider-Man.
Zendaya stars as Tashi Duncan in Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s new tennis drama. In 2004, Dunst starred alongside Paul Bettany in Wimbledon, a rom-com where she plays Lizzie Bradbury. Stone starred in 2017’s Battle of the Sexes (coming five years after her final appearance as Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) as Billie Jean King, with the film loosely based on the 1973 match between Jean and Bobby Riggs.
Dunst was the first to portray Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi’s live-action Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire. Stone followed, but she played Gwen Stacy alongside Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man. In the MCU, the role of MJ was played by Zendaya in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home.
Challengers hits theaters on April 26, 2024. You can read our review, and you can catch other new movies this month.