Margot Robbie will star in A24 and Square Peg’s “The Week of Pain,” with Kristoffer Borgli writing and directing, a package Deadline broke Friday morning and Variety and THR confirmed before lunch. THR reports it is Robbie’s first film with A24, which puts the studio’s own director on a call sheet with a star whose last movie cleared $241.8 million.
Plot details are under wraps at all three trades and no release date was announced. Deadline reports Robbie committed to shoot in 2027. A24 is financing and producing with Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster’s Square Peg, Dilemma Films and Robbie’s LuckyChap. Dilemma is Borgli and Tyler Campellone, the same duo who co-produced “The Drama,” so the writer-director is also a producing partner on his own star vehicle rather than someone handed a job.
The reunion math explains why this got greenlit fast. “The Drama” opened April 3 and finished at $134,670,180 worldwide on a $28 million net budget, with 64.3 percent of that total coming from overseas after A24 sold foreign rights out of Cannes the year before release. It was the fifth A24 title to cross $100 million worldwide, trailing Marty Supreme ($181 million), Everything Everywhere All at Once ($148 million), Civil War ($127 million) and The Materialists ($108 million), and the same report found 80 percent of surveyed ticket buyers came for both Zendaya and Robert Pattinson by name.
Borgli’s prior film tells the smaller half of the story. “Dream Scenario,” made with the same A24 and Square Peg backers in 2023, never played more than 1,578 theaters and closed at $12,502,808 worldwide. Same filmmaker, same financiers, eleven times the gross. (The cast changed. Nothing else did.) IndieWire marked the trend Friday, writing that Borgli has become “one of Hollywood’s go-to filmmakers for A-listers looking to stretch their acting chops.”
What this probably means: A24 sells the director and treats the star as the multiplier on top. IndieWire’s breakdown of “Materialists” noted Celine Song’s “Past Lives” made $42.6 million worldwide before her follow-up with Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal crossed $100 million, with Song herself the draw for New York and Los Angeles audiences. Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” reached $192.4 million with Timothée Chalamet. Robbie outweighs every name in that pattern: $241.8 million for “Wuthering Heights” in February, an “Ocean’s” prequel on the way, her own production company attached here. (She is not auditioning for relevance.) The usual trade is a director’s credibility lifting a star’s risky choice. This one tests whether the filmmaker stays the draw once the star is the bigger name in the room.
There’s a complication in A24’s own ledger. The studio’s highest grosser isn’t a star vehicle at all: “Backrooms,” made for roughly $10 million, sits at $400,393,888 worldwide. At A24, star-plus-auteur tops out near $135 million while genre horror clears $400 million, so this remains a prestige bet, not a shot at the company ceiling.
Robbie’s next confirmed date arrives first regardless. The “Ocean’s” prequel with Bradley Cooper writing, directing and starring is dated June 25, 2027. “The Week of Pain” now has a director, a star and three producing banners, and still no logline, with Robbie due on set sometime after.
