The surest way for a studio to show that an original hit was no accident is to hand its filmmaker a bigger star. That is the logic behind the next move of the independent studio that backed Kristoffer Borgli’s wedding-week dramedy The Drama: after the film turned a small budget into a box-office upset, it is pairing the Norwegian writer-director with Margot Robbie, one of the few actors whose name can carry an original project on its own.

Variety has confirmed that Robbie will star in The Week of Pain, which Borgli will write and direct. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the producing team is a familiar one: Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg banner returns alongside Dilemma Films and LuckyChap, the production company Robbie co-founded.

A24 is producing and financing, which makes this a re-team for the studio too. Square Peg and A24 were already behind The Drama, which starred Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple whose wedding week is derailed by a childhood secret. Released in April, the film grossed $135 million worldwide against a $28 million budget, according to Variety, a ratio that makes an intimate original comedy look like a repeatable model rather than a one-off.

Borgli’s earlier work explains why nobody expects a conventional star vehicle. Sick of Myself followed a young woman who sabotages her own health to win attention, and Dream Scenario cast Nicolas Cage as an unremarkable professor who suddenly starts appearing in strangers’ dreams. Variety’s own guess for the new film is “another squirmy drama with streaks of cringe-out humor,” the register in which Borgli has made vanity and social embarrassment painfully funny.

For Robbie, the project sits between two studio-scale bets. Her most recent film, Warner Bros.’ Wuthering Heights, cast her as Cathy opposite Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff and earned $241 million worldwide. Next comes an Ocean’s 11 prequel directed by Bradley Cooper, who also stars alongside her, presumably as the parents of George Clooney’s Danny Ocean. At CinemaCon 2026, Robbie revealed that the film will follow an “epic heist at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix.”

No start date or release window has been announced for The Week of Pain. What the deal does show is where Robbie’s own company stands: LuckyChap is not just lending A24 a famous face for Borgli’s next study in discomfort, it is putting its name on the production.

Tags: casting, a24, Margot Robbie, Kristoffer Borgli, Square Peg, The Week of Pain

A24 rewards director Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama hit with Barbie star Margot Robbie

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