Zendaya And Robert Pattinson’s The Drama Faces Backlash Over Twist

This article contains major spoilers for The Drama.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s new movie The Drama continues to face backlash and accusations of trivialising a serious issue.

Released last week, the pair’s new movie centres around a young couple who are about to get married, only for their whole world to be turned upside down when a revelation from the bride-to-be’s past comes to light.

What was deliberately left out of the film’s promotional material was the fact Zendaya’s character’s dark secret was that she had planned and almost carried out a school shooting when she was a teenager.

Even before the movie had hit cinemas, its subject matter had proved to be controversial, with the father of a high school student killed in the Columbine shooting of 1999 telling TMZ he thought it was “awful” that the subject of mass violence should be used for entertainment.

Since then, others affected by the subject have been speaking out.

Mia Tretta, a survivor of two school shootings, told USA Today: “A character planning a school shooting isn’t something that should be joked about – it’s a reality that me and hundreds of thousands of others live every day.”

“Even the title of the film being The Drama,” she added. “A school shooting is not girls gossiping in class or stealing someone else’s boyfriend – it’s real people’s nightmares.”

She added: “It’s frankly exploiting a crisis. There are ways to show this nuance without using people’s trauma as a gimmick. Studios and stars have massive platforms that they should use to give dimension to survivors, not perpetrators.”

In another interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Parkland shooting survivor Jackie Corin said: “Gun violence, particularly in schools, is not just another dramatic device. Art has the capacity to deepen public understanding and create emotional clarity and awareness, but it can also flatten and distort reality, especially when it leans on shorthand or tries to make something more palatable than it actually is.

“With something like a near school shooting, even small tonal choices can shift whether a story feels productive or dismissive.”

Neither Tretta nor Corin had seen The Drama at the time of their respective interviews.

The gun control advocacy group March For Our Lives previously posted a statement on Instagram, in which they said: “The way this film has been marketed is deeply misaligned with the reality it engages. We expect better from A24 and the artists behind it.”

HuffPost UK has contacted representatives for the production company A24 and The Drama director Kristoffer Borgli for comment.

Zendaya previously told Jimmy Kimmel Live!: “Everybody has their own kind of feelings leaving the theatre [after watching The Drama], especially with the big twist. And there’s so many conversations that are had after you watch it.

“It’s just one of those things, I really hope that people don’t spoil it for each other so they’re allowed to go into it just unknowing and really experience The Drama.”

The Drama received largely positive reviews from critics upon its release, although many anticipated that its central themes could make it an uncomfortable and polarising watch.

While it fell behind Project Hail Mary and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie at the box office, it still pulled in a decent-sized audience, giving A24 its third biggest opening weekend to date after Civil War and Marty Supreme.