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Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s new film was teased this week using an unusual marketing tactic: a fake engagement announcement printed in the Boston Globe.
The notice appeared in the newspaper’s Living/Arts section after editors were asked to hold the TV Critic’s Corner column to accommodate the placement, The Boston Globe wrote.
It featured the pair with the names of their characters from the forthcoming A24 film The Drama, complete with a formal portrait.
Headlined “Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson Engaged”, the notice used the same image featured on the film’s poster, which the entertainment company and Zendaya both shared later on their respective social media accounts.
According to IMDb, the film will follow a happily engaged couple whose relationship is “put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails”.
The trailer for the film is expected to be released on Wednesday.
Not much is known about the film, but the notice did offer a few details about the fictional couple. Zendaya’s Emma Harwood is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Roger Harwood of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who “placed” the announcement in the paper.
Mr Harwood is a decorated military veteran, and Emma is listed as a 2013 Portside High School graduate and a 2017 honours graduate of Boston University with a BA in English, currently working at a bookstore called Mission Books.
Charlie Thompson (Pattinson), the son of Mr and Mrs Alan Thompson of London, is a 2004 graduate of Eaton College and the director of the fictional Cambridge Art Museum.
According to the notice, Thompson also has a PhD in Art History from Tufts University, but The Boston Globe reported that the university only offers an MA in the subject, citing the university’s website.
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According to the paper, a source familiar with the matter said that the ad only appeared in the paper since the film is set in the city and was also filmed there.
The notice added that “the couple will wed on 3 April 2026,” also the film’s release date.
Film poster for The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson (A24)
Not much else is known about the romantic drama, which is directed and written by Kristoffer Borgli and features Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, and Hailey Gates as supporting cast.
Earlier this year, Pattinson said in an interview that he went “crazy” over one scene in The Drama, which Zendaya had to help him through.
“We had a scene together that was driving me crazy,” Pattinson said in an interview with the French magazine Premiere. “I was desperately looking for its meaning, writing pages and pages of textual analysis.”
“I ended up calling Zendaya the night before shooting the scene,” he said. “I shared my doubts with her, I spoke for two hours, and after a while, very calmly, she made me understand that the line just said what it meant to say, that there was no hidden meaning.”
“And there I was going crazy for three days,” he added.
Pattinson and Zendaya are also starring together in the third instalment of the Dune series, as well as Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, both set to be released in 2026.
