Fans on Monday might have been startled after spotting an engagement notice in The Boston Globe announcing the forthcoming nuptials of Hollywood stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
Given both actors’ well-known relationships with Tom Holland and Suki Waterhouse, respectively, the formal portrait seemed like a bombshell, or at the very least confusing, until the names “Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson” provided the giveaway.
The advert was, in fact, a playful teaser for the pair’s new film, slipped into the Globe’s Living/Arts section after editors were asked to hold the TV Critic’s Corner column to accommodate it.
Once the ruse became clear, the notice turned out to be the poster for The Drama, the forthcoming A24 film in which Zendaya and Pattinson play an engaged couple.
The announcement reproduced the same portrait used on the film’s poster and carried the headline “Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson Engaged”, an image later shared by both A24 and Zendaya on social media.
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.
An engagement announcement was placed in The Boston Globe newspaper as part of A24's 'The Drama' ad campaign!
— Zendaya Updates (@Zendaya_Updated) December 9, 2025
Zendaya plays 'Emma Harwood' and Robert Pattinson plays 'Charlie Thompson' in the upcoming film. pic.twitter.com/TcdYwRftuy
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.
A Globe source told the paper that they only agreed to host the fake notice because the new movie is set in Boston and was also filmed there.
The notice added that “the couple will wed on 3 April 2026”, which is also the film’s release date.
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.
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