JUST DESSERTS

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Documentary Debut Beaten at Box Office By Viral Cat Videos

Never underestimate the cinematic power of cats.

Cookie Queens is the uplifting story of four young Girl Scouts trying to be the best at what they do: selling enough feel-good, taste-better baked goods so they can be crowned America’s “cookie queen.” It’s inspirational stuff, a 91-minute parable of passion and female empowerment and, to boot, the first film executive-produced by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and released under their Archewell banner.

And then there’s CatVideoFest 2026, a 71-minute-long compilation of the “latest and best” internet cat videos.

Both films premiered in the U.S. last Friday. Cookie Queens opened in 446 theaters, CatVideoFest in 255. According to Box Office Mojo, the cookie movie grossed $327,797 across the weekend; the feline film $569,414. Average take for cookies: $735 per screen; for cats, $2,233.

The Times of London, never particularly supportive of Harry and Meghan, rejoiced. “Not taking the good name of the world’s No 1 cat video festival in vain, this is by any measure a pretty pitiful return,” a fantastically sniffy “industry source” told the newspaper.

But maybe the moral for Harry and Meghan is a simple one: just rein it in, guys. Reviews for their film were “mixed,” but they weren’t actually awful. Variety didn’t hate it, but thought it was too much of a “reality-show ramble.” “It’s like Dance Moms meets a preteen version of The Apprentice meets the 2002 spelling-bee documentary Spellbound (a much better film), all built around the hawking of tasty treats,” it said. Roger Ebert gave it a solid three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it an “adorable delight.” The “artificially sweetened taste of capitalism” soon fades, critic Tomris Laffly said, adding: “What lingers is the undeniable and very welcome reality that the young girls of today will one day be the leaders and challengers of the world that they’re growing up in: commercialism, patriarchy and all.”

Play Video

Harry and Meghan attended the Cookie Queens premiere at the Sundance Festival back in January. It went down pretty well by all accounts, although it did start a quarter-hour late after Meghan, introduced as the Duchess of Sussex, decided to make a speech. Since then, however, the Archewell publicity machine appears to have fallen silent. Cookie Queens has had to make its own way in this brutal cat-eat-cookie world.

Maybe the couple has bigger things on their mind. Maybe they’ve lost their touch. Or perhaps they should just learn to exhale—and wait for the good things to come to them.

Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Follow all Tom Sykes’ reporting at The Royalist on Substack or listen to The Royalist podcast on YouTube.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Philippe Naughton

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.