Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s latest Hollywood project was upstaged at the box office over the weekend by 70 minutes of internet cat videos.
Cookie Queens, a documentary that was executive produced by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex through their media company Archewell Productions, earned about US$354,000 (S$453,000) across 446 theatres, figures from Box Office Mojo showed.
CatVideoFest 2026, a compilation of viral feline clips by Seattle-based filmmaker Will Braden, on the other hand, took in about US$569,000 while playing on just 255 screens.
That worked out to US$790 a theatre for the Sussexes’ pet project, compared with roughly US$2,230 for the cat video series.
Cookie Queens follows four Girl Scouts as they compete in the demanding world of cookie sales.
The film explores ambition, leadership and adolescence, along with the pressure of persuading strangers that they need another box of Thin Mints, the peppermint-and-chocolate mainstay in the youth organisation’s annual fund-raising circuit.
Meghan promoted the documentary before its theatrical release and discussed her own childhood experience as a Girl Scout.
But the Sussexes’ high profile apparently has not been enough to claw past the enduring appeal of weird cats.
The lacklustre opening of Cookie Queens is again raising questions about whether all the attention surrounding Harry and Meghan can draw audiences for projects that are not directly about them or Britain’s royal family.
“Harry and Meghan remain extraordinarily effective at generating headlines, but headlines and paying customers are two very different things,” royal commentator Kinsey Schofield, host of YouTube’s Kinsey Schofield Unfiltered video podcast, told Fox News Digital.
“There was a period when simply attaching their names to something guaranteed enormous curiosity. I’m not convinced that’s true any more,” he said.
“And there’s no getting around the optics of finishing five places behind a 70-minute compilation of internet cat videos. Hollywood can forgive a lot, but being beaten by CatVideoFest is the sort of indignity that writes its own punchline,” said Schofield.
One weekend at the box office is not necessarily a verdict on Archewell’s prospects. Documentaries typically have a difficult time in theatres, and Cookie Queens entered the market without the personal revelations that fuelled interest in the couple’s earlier projects.
Their 2022 Netflix series, Harry & Meghan, drew worldwide attention with its account of their departure from royal duties and their strained relationship with the monarchy.
Harry’s 2023 memoir, Spare, also became an international bestseller and generated weeks of headlines.
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