The A24 romance comedy The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson has finally passed a critical box office goal. Releasing nationwide on April 3 in the United States, the film had a decent domestic opening weekend and has performed decently over its first month in theaters, particularly in Europe. The Drama, directed and written by Kristoffer Borgil, follows engaged couple Emma Harwood (Zendaya) and Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) whose upcoming wedding is threatened after the pair learns damaging secrets about each other. Given that the movie came out on the same day as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, its box office haul so far has been better than expected.
A24’s The Drama is performing well at the box office
As of May 1, The Drama has earned a total of $114 million worldwide, with $44.8 million coming domestically and $69.3 million coming internationally, based on Box Office Mojo.
The film has a production budget of $28 million, according to The Numberswhich means that the movie has already become profitable. To account for marketing and advertising, movies generally need to make 2.5 times its budget at the box office to break even, which comes out to $70 million for The Drama. This means that the A24 production is not only already a success, but has raked in over $40 million in profit, showing the strength of Zendaya and Pattinson as romantic leads. The film still has about a month or two in theaters as well, though it will face competition against the female-driven blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Roughly 60 percent of The Drama’s box office total has come overseas (that is, outside of the US and Canada), which is relatively high for movies in recent years. In particular, it has had a strong audience reception in the United Kingdom ($12.4 million), France ($6.1 million), Germany ($4.2 million), Italy ($5.7 million), Mexico ($4.8 million), Australia ($4 million), and Russia / CIS ($7 million).
On the domestic front, the film had a decent opener of $14.3 million, which was on the higher end of some box office predictions. Its $44 million domestic total so far puts it in 14th place for movies in 2026 and sits between the domestic openers for romance film Reminders of Him and the action thriller Crime 101.
To put these numbers into perspective with other romance films released in 2026, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s Wuthering Heights made $241 million on a $80 million budget, while Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page’s You, Me & Tuscany has earned $21 million so far on a $18 million budget. The Drama is particularly good news for A24, which has had some early struggles in 2026 with Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary ($1.6 million so far on a $20 million budget) and Glen Powell’s How to Make a Killing ($20.4 million on a $15 million budget). That said, the independent film company did have a major box office hit with the Canadian supernatural horror flick Undertone that earned a whopping $21 million on a mere $500,000 budget.
A part of The Drama’s continued success has come from its high critic scores and audience reviews. On Rotten Tomatoesthe R-rated film is “Certified Fresh” and holds a 77% rating from critics and an equally strong 78% rating from audiences. It also has a high average score of 7.5 out of 10 on IMDB. News’s Jonathan Sim scored The Drama an 8 out of 10 in his review, praising how the film “explores how easily love can be destabilized when the image we have of someone is disrupted, and how difficult it is to rebuilt that image once it’s been shattered.”
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