Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Pay Millions for Hot Film Option: Report

Welcome to this week’s edition of Royalist, The Daily Beast’s newsletter for all things royal and Royal Family. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Sunday.

Harry and Meghan fictional film producers?

After losing their multi-million dollar Spotify deal, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have apparently had enough of talking about themselves—for now anyway. The Sun on Sunday reports that they have secured the film rights of a book called Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune.

This, they hope, may be part of their reported comeback effort—and their first off-camera-only project for Netflix. The Sun calls it “Hollywood or Bust,” which is—as is the way with Hollywood, Harry and Meghan, and Sun headlines in general—a tad over-dramatic. The project—like so many others—is stalled while Hollywood’s writers are out on strike.

Can Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Reinvent Themselves This Fall?

PR guru Mark Borkowski told the Sun those rights may have cost the couple $3.8m, adding, “Although if it’s a best-seller, you wouldn’t be handing it to Harry and Meghan. There’s some amazing drama producers out there. Why would you give away a prize asset?” The Sun says one answer may be that publishers Penguin Random House published Harry’s memoir Spare, and Meghan could have a personal connection to the author.

The book is a romance about a couple in their 30’s, but with also a lot of other juicy ingredients such as “childhood trauma over losing a parent in a car crash, mental health, and post-natal depression.” Plus: steamy sex scenes and drug use!

An insider told the paper: “The themes of the book gripped the couple, and it was chosen for their first adaptation with Netflix.”

A source said: “This is their biggest and most significant as producers.”

Next: Will the movie get made, and will it be a hit or a miss?

Sussexes and Beckhams still at (endless) war

When David Beckham flew to attend Prince Harry’s Invictus Games in Sydney in 2018, he was puzzled not to have Harry greet or even see him, according to the Sun on Sunday. “Where is he? When will I meet him?” Beckham is reported to have asked. Harry had “no plans” to be pictured with Beckham, yet had made the invitation at his wedding to Meghan earlier that same year.

The Sun says the reason for the blanking was Meghan, and her fear of being upstaged by Victoria Beckham in media coverage.

“She was not prepared to tolerate anything flattering regarding the Beckhams and the Games to appear in the media,” the Sun claims, adding she allegedly “shouted at her staff and allegedly threw a cup of tea into the air”—which seems an admirable effort at a particularly British hissy fit if true.

The Sun’s source seems to have an intimate knowledge of the Beckham’s alleged hospitality to Meghan, saying that she stayed in the Beckhams’ six-bedroom house in Beverly Hills before her marriage to Harry.

“Her excuse was to avoid the paparazzi. At no cost, all her needs were provided by the Beckhams’ staff.” When the Sun reported Victoria had helped Meghan with makeup advice, Meghan allegedly thought the Beckhams had leaked it. Upset, and presumably more airborne cups of tea, followed.

From there, the perceived slights mounted up, as deliciously dumb-sounding as only very rich and privileged people can behave when their priorities bear no relation to the matter of living in the real world. Apparently, things really fell apart when David Beckham flew to Boston last December to support Kate Middleton and Prince William at the Earthshot Prize ceremony. Anyway, they’re all still at odds apparently. We are as devastated to write this as you are to read it.

Subscribe here to get all the latest royal news and gossip with Tom Sykes and Tim Teeman.

Lend us your ears

Here at the Royalist we don’t like to ever miss an opportunity to share the most iconic photo of modern royal childhood ever, so it is with great delight we report that Hannah McKay’s seminal picture of Prince Louis blocking his ears on the Buckingham Palace balcony as a Royal Air Force flypast to mark the queen's Platinum Jubilee roared overhead has been nominated for picture of the year 2022 by the U.K. Picture Editors Guild.

McKay has already won the British Press Photographers’ Association Press Photographer of the Year for 2022 for the image. Surely a slam dunk?

Stepping out

Meghan Markle turned 42 this week and she and Harry were photographed by the Mail at Montecito neighborhood Italian Tre Lune for a birthday dinner with Matt Cohen, the husband of Meghan’s friend Heather Dorak. The couple looked happy as they left the restaurant, with Meghan in a black and white dress by Posse and Harry looking chic in a linen shirt and trousers.

The low-profile joint outing for the couple came just days after they appeared together in their first formal joint engagement for some time, congratulating the winners of a youth technology award they helped fund.

The couple are likely to be back in the limelight in the next few weeks as Harry’s beloved Invictus Games kicks off, likely supported by a Netflix film about the games entitled Heart of Invictus.

Scottish vacation

King Charles and Queen Camilla are following in the late Queen Elizabeth’s footsteps by spending much of the summer in Scotland, and this weekend Charles attended the Mey Highland Games, which includes events such as caber-tossing, a tug-of-war and an all-new 90kg “Mey Stone” lifting challenge.

However, they are also ringing the changes, most notably by not staying in Balmoral Castle itself, where the queen died last year, but in their own smaller property on the estate, Birkhall.

The Mirror notes this marks the first time Balmoral has been without a monarch physically in residence at some point over the summer for the first time since the 19th century.

Birkhall is a smaller house on the estate and it became famous during the Covid pandemic as Charles made a number of lockdown videos from the property. He inherited it from the late Queen Mother in 2002. So, there’s another massive empty house for the keeper of the privy purse—and the palace spinners—to worry about!

This week in royal history

Happy 35^th birthday to Princess Beatrice, elder daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, who was born on August 8, 1988.

Unanswered questions

The Prince Harry/Meghan Markle comeback express continues with the reports they are set to become fictional film producers. How receptive Hollywood is to the couple remains to be seen.

Love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage? Sign up here to get Royalist newsletters sent straight to your inbox.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.