Dua Lipa Is Joining an A24 Comedy --- And That Feels About Right

By Dana Whitfield. Mar 28, 2026

Dua Lipa photographed in 2022. Photo by Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Dua Lipa joining an A24 comedy was announced on March 26, 2026, and it immediately felt like the kind of casting that prompts a pause and then a nod. Not surprising, exactly — but right. As Deadline first reported and Billboard confirmed, the Grammy-winning pop star has been cast in Peaked, a film directed by Molly Gordon from a script she co-wrote with Allie Levitan. Her character details are being kept under wraps.

The film follows two women who were the terror of their high school social hierarchy, now attempting to recapture that lost authority at their ten-year reunion. It is the kind of premise that lives or dies on the chemistry and comedic precision of its cast — which, it turns out, is considerable. Lipa joins Emma Mackey, Laura Dern, Simone Ashley, Levon Hawke, Amy Sedaris, Gabby Windey, and Connor Storrie. Production is scheduled to begin in April 2026.

Who Dua Lipa Is Right Now

At 30, Lipa is in a particular kind of cultural position — one that very few pop stars reach and even fewer manage to expand. She has won three Grammys and seven Brit Awards. Future Nostalgia remains one of the most celebrated pop albums of its era. Her most recent work, including the 2024 album Radical Optimism, demonstrated she is not coasting on that reputation but actively building something longer and stranger.

On screen, her previous work has been cameo-scale: a role in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in 2023, a brief appearance in Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle in 2024. Peaked is a different proposition — an ensemble role in a film with a genuine creative pedigree, at a studio whose brand has become shorthand for a particular kind of intelligent, unexpected storytelling. As she told TIME earlier this year, according to Billboard, “I love the idea of embodying a different character and having an assignment.” A24 is the kind of assignment that tests whether that instinct is real.

What A24 Brings to the Equation

A24 has a history with musicians that is neither accidental nor purely decorative. Charli XCX, The Weeknd, Andre Benjamin, Janelle Monae, and others have appeared in A24 projects over the years. The studio tends to cast musicians not as stunt additions but as genuine creative contributors to stories that benefit from their particular energy and presence. Whether Lipa fits that pattern as more than a recognizable name will depend on the role and on Gordon’s direction.

Molly Gordon is an interesting choice for this material. She is known to audiences as an actress — most notably from The Bear — but Peaked is her feature directorial debut, which she is making from her own script. That combination of personal investment and creative control tends to produce work that is either precisely what it set out to be or instructively revealing about the gap between ambition and execution. A24 presumably has a view on which side of that line Peaked falls.

The Cultural Collision Worth Watching

There is something genuinely interesting about the specific moment in which this casting lands. Lipa is between album cycles — her fourth studio album has been anticipated but not yet announced — and Peaked gives her a 2026 presence in a medium she has clearly been thinking about seriously. The A24 association is not incidental. It signals a deliberate reach toward a kind of creative credibility that is different from chart performance or streaming numbers.

For audiences who have followed her career from the early singles through Future Nostalgia and beyond, the move raises a question that is worth sitting with: is Dua Lipa building toward something in film the way she built toward something in music — methodically, with genuine craft, over time? The casting announcement does not answer that. Peaked will. In 2026, the interesting question is not whether she belongs in an A24 film. It is what she does once she is there.

References: Dua Lipa Joins A24 Comedy Peaked | Dua Lipa Cast in A24 Comedy Peaked Alongside Laura Dern | Dua Lipa Joins A24 Comedy Peaked