Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ Challengers Score Snubbed At 2025 Oscars

Do me a favor. Grab your headphones, turn to your music app of choice, and press play on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for “Challengers,” Luca Guadagnino’s 2024 film about sex, tennis, and power. I’ll wait while you listen.

How freaking powerful does that score make you feel? I’ll tell you this much: When I went to see “Challengers” at my local movie theater last summer on a random Thursday afternoon, I left the showing feeling like I could run a marathon or perhaps lift a car. (There is no world where I could ever physically do either of those things, to be quite clear.) That was partly due to the stunning lead performances by Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist as the most twisted tennis threesome of all time — as well as Guadagnino’s cinematography, which he crafted alongside his director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom — but quite a lot of the adrenaline I felt after seeing “Challengers” was thanks to its pounding, aggressive score. Reznor and Ross, who have won two Academy Awards for their scores (“The Social Network” and “Soul,” specifically), should have earned a nod for Best Original Score at the 2025 Oscars when Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott announced the nominees on Thursday, January 23. But they didn’t. 

That’s right: A score that magically makes the listener feel as if they could win a Grand Slam with absolutely zero tennis training got completely shut out at the Oscars … and ultimately, “Challengers,” which is easily one of the best movies released in 2024, received zero nominations. This is egregious, and I’m happy to tell you why.

So which films took the five spots in the race for Best Original Score, leaving no room for two-time winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ incredible score for “Challengers?” Daniel Blumberg earned a nod for Brady Corbet’s three-hour historical epic “The Brutalist,” Volker Bertelmann earned a nomination for “Conclave” (after winning for director’s Edward Berger’s previous Oscar darling film “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2022), Clément Ducol and Camille made their way into the category for the controversial French film “Emilia Pérez,” Kris Bowers got a nomination for the animated favorite “The Wild Robot,” and finally, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz and John Powell, the latter of whom worked as a co-composer and choir director, rounded out the category for “Wicked: Part One.”

There will certainly be some outcry over “Emilia Pérez,” which earned a record-tying 13 nominations during the 2025 nominations, because the movie is just generally stirring up controversy, but I’m going to pick on Schwartz and Powell for a moment, with all due respect. If Hans Zimmer’s masterful score for “Dune: Part Two” was deemed ineligible for a nomination because it used too much pre-existing music, how in the world is “Wicked,” which certainly seems to be made up of music created for Schwartz’s Broadway musical, eligible in this category? And eligibility aside, how could it beat out something as different and creative as “Challengers?” Every year, the Oscars do a couple of truly bonkers things during the nomination process; selecting “Wicked” for a Best Original Score nomination over “Challengers” is certainly one of those bonkers things.

The fact that “Challengers” didn’t make it into the Best Original Score category was a harbinger of terrible things to come for Luca Guadagnino’s fun, wildly steamy movie, which centers around a tennis match between Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) overseen by Patrick’s ex and Art’s wife, the terrifyingly austere Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, going full “apex predator” in her performance). Ultimately, O’Connor, Faist, and Zendaya were all shut out of the acting categories, though it should be said that they all faced pretty formidable competition (and Faist should have a previous nomination under his belt for “West Side Story,” but that’s a different discussion). Writer Justin Kuritzkes — whose partner Celine Song directed last year’s three-hander “Past Lives,” which did earn Oscar nominations — missed out on a nod for his original screenplay, Guadagnino didn’t get nominated for Best Director, and the film didn’t find a place in Best Picture, which is comprised of 10 nominees.

Critics will argue that “Challengers” is too sexy and too fun (and came out early in the year, letting later releases “steal” its nominations as a matter of simple recency bias), and they’re probably right, because the Oscars are rarely sexy or fun. Still, it’s bitterly disappointing that the movie earned absolutely zero nominations, and it feels borderline criminal that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ brilliant score wasn’t recognized. 

“Challengers” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.