Cookie Queens earns $354,000 in opening weekend, trailing CatVideoFest 2026 on far fewer screens

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16. "Cookie Queens," a documentary executive produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle through Archewell Productions, earned approximately $354,000 across 446 theaters in its opening weekend, according to reported box-office figures. "CatVideoFest 2026," a compilation of viral internet cat videos, collected approximately $569,000 from 255 screens over the same period.

The film follows four Girl Scouts navigating the competitive world of cookie sales while examining ambition, leadership and adolescence. Markle personally promoted the documentary ahead of its theatrical debut, discussing the film and her own childhood experience as a Girl Scout, the reports show.

Royal commentator Kinsey Schofield, host of the YouTube program "Kinsey Schofield Unfiltered," drew a distinction between the couple's ability to generate media attention and their ability to attract paying audiences. "Headlines and paying customers are two very different things," Schofield told Fox News Digital. She said Markle's name recognition may carry more infamy than fame at this stage, and that neither quality reliably converts into ticket sales. "There's a significant difference commercially," Schofield said.

British royals expert Hilary Fordwich said the result follows a pattern she attributes to the couple's content focus. The opening figures indicate, Fordwich said, that demand for Harry and Meghan's projects is limited when those projects move away from the royal family or revelations about it. Fordwich said Markle "certainly doesn't have the commercial pull she has so desired."

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams identified the couple's three projects centered on their departure from royal life as their most commercially significant: an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the 2022 Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan," and Harry's 2023 memoir "Spare." Subsequent projects, Fitzwilliams said, including "With Love, Meghan," a series on the Invictus Games, and "Polo," have not replicated that audience draw.

Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties in 2020 and relocated to California, later signing major Hollywood deals. Schofield said the couple's standing in the industry has shifted in the six years since. "The questions are much more conventional now: What can you produce? What can you sell? Can you build an audience around something that isn't royal drama?" she said.

Schofield said each project that reaches audiences now functions as part of Archewell's commercial record, and that "Cookie Queens" makes what she called the need for a genuine mainstream success that much more urgent.