Zendaya looking concerned in A24’s The Drama, 2026Image via A24
After a decade spent in the indie trenches, A24 is making a name for itself by empowering the kind of star-driven studio movies that Hollywood stopped making during that period. A24 noticed a gap in the market and filled it with movies helmed by critically acclaimed filmmakers and led by actors looking to diversify from the usual fare. It relied on an increasingly recognizable brand identity and captivating marketing strategies. Not every project has worked, but in the last few years, A24’s films have consistently leveled up at the box office. The studio recently delivered its fifth feature film to hit the coveted $100 million mark in worldwide box-office revenue, as it prepares to enter production on perhaps its most ambitious project yet, the fantasy video game adaptation Elden Ring.
A24’s latest hit is The Drama, the cringe-inducing dark comedy starring Zendayaand Robert Pattinson. Directed by Kristoffer Borgli, who previously worked with the company on the surreal comedy film Dream Scenario, The Drama also features Alana Haim, Hailey Benton Gates, and Mamoudou Athie in supporting roles. The movie follows a couple whose lives are upended by a scandalous personal revelation in the week leading up to their wedding. The Drama opened to mostly positive reviews and has stirred debates about issues such as gun violence, privilege, and race in America. It currently holds a 77% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Flirting with complex themes, The Drama walks a tonal tightrope with impressive poise thanks to career-highlight performances by Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.”
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Here Are the Four A24 Movies That ‘The Drama’ Continues to Trail
Having hit the $100 million mark worldwide against a reported budget of $28 million, The Drama only trails Materialists ($108 million), Civil War ($127 million), Everything Everywhere All at Once ($142 million), and Marty Supreme ($180 million) on A24’s all-time leaderboard. The Drama has overtaken Materialists‘ $36 million domestic haul and is on track to hit the $50 million mark by the end of its run. It has also passed the $95 million lifetime global haul of Zendaya’s Challengers, which was distributed by Amazon MGM Studios a couple of years ago. This is a major year for the star, who also appears in the third season of HBO’s A24-produced drama series Euphoria. She will join Pattinson in Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey and Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune: Part Three, and will also reprise her role as MJ in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
