When The Drama opened in theaters on April 3, few expected the modestly budgeted A24 release to become one of the studio’s biggest commercial successes ever. Five weeks later, it has crossed $100 million at the worldwide box office and is now making its way to digital streaming platforms, giving audiences who missed it in theaters their first chance to watch it at home.
The film, written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as Emma and Charlie, a couple in the final stretch before their wedding. The story turns on a single gathering with two close friends, during which each of the four characters confesses to the worst thing they have ever done. Emma’s revelation carries the most weight, setting off a chain of events that puts the entire relationship and the upcoming wedding in serious jeopardy. The film is rated R.
Where and when to watch
The Drama arrives on premium video on demand on Tuesday, May 5, with availability confirmed on Prime Video as well as Apple TV, Fandango at Home and YouTube Movies and TV. The purchase price is set at $24.99 across platforms. A rental option has not been officially listed yet, though pricing for digital rentals typically runs about five dollars below the purchase price, which would put it around $19.99 for a 48-hour viewing window.
The streaming debut comes as A24 begins to scale back the film’s theatrical footprint. The studio dropped its domestic theater count from more than 1,800 venues in late April to around 857 venues over the most recent weekend, a sign that the film’s theatrical run is winding down even as it continues to play in select locations. It finished ninth at the domestic box office this past weekend with just over $900,000 in ticket sales.
What the box office numbers mean for A24
The Drama has earned $46.9 million in North America and $57.9 million internationally for a combined worldwide gross of $103.9 million. Against a reported production budget of $28 million before marketing costs, that performance represents a significant return for the studio.
More notably, it places The Drama among a very small group of films in A24’s 13-year history. It is only the fifth film the studio has ever released to surpass $100 million at the global box office. The four films ahead of it are Marty Supreme, which grossed $191.3 million in 2025, Everything Everywhere All at Once at $143.4 million in 2022, Civil War at $127.3 million in 2024 and Materialists at $107.8 million in 2025.
A24 has built its reputation on smaller, unconventional films that tend to win critical attention more reliably than commercial audiences. Crossing the $100 million threshold is genuinely rare for the studio, which makes The Drama an outlier within a filmography already known for standing apart from mainstream Hollywood fare.
Why the film resonated
The Drama is the kind of film that works because its premise is deceptively simple and emotionally loaded. A confession among friends sounds like the setup for an intimate dinner party drama, but Borgli uses it as a pressure cooker, pulling the characters apart and examining what is left when the carefully maintained version of a relationship meets something true and difficult.
Zendaya and Pattinson are two of the more compelling screen presences working in film today, and their pairing gives the material a weight it might not carry with a different cast. The result is a film that earned its audience rather than being handed one, which may explain why it has held on at the box office longer than most releases of its scale.
