Meghan Markle’s Hollywood Ambitions Suffer Another Setback as Cookie Queens Faces Mixed Reviews and a Disappointing Box-Office Debut
Meghan Markle’s ambitions in Hollywood have encountered another uncomfortable moment after Cookie Queens, the documentary produced by Meghan and Prince Harry’s Archewell Productions, struggled to attract moviegoers during its theatrical opening.
The film, directed by Alysa Nahmias, follows four young Girl Scouts as they navigate the intense annual cookie-selling season. Rather than simply focusing on cookies, the documentary explores childhood ambition, competition, family expectations and the entrepreneurial lessons surrounding one of America’s best-known youth traditions. It runs for approximately 91 minutes and received a limited theatrical release on August 7, 2026.
On paper, the project appeared to have several ingredients capable of attracting attention. It had royal connections through Harry and Meghan, premiered at Sundance earlier in the year and centered on a subject closely associated with Meghan, who has previously spoken about her own Girl Scout experience.
Yet the theatrical numbers have proved challenging. Reports indicate that Cookie Queens opened in 446 U.S. cinemas and earned approximately $327,797 during its opening weekend, placing it at No. 15. That works out to roughly $735 per theater, a modest result for a film receiving a national theatrical push. It was even outperformed by CatVideoFest 2026, a compilation of viral cat videos that played in fewer theaters.
The reception from critics has also been far from universally enthusiastic.
One of the most significant criticisms concerns the documentary’s structure. Some reviewers have argued that the movie sometimes resembles a reality television program rather than a deeply investigative documentary. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, criticized what it considered an overly staged quality and suggested that the film’s young subjects and their families appear unusually polished for supposedly spontaneous documentary moments.
Other criticism has focused on the film’s limited exploration of the larger issues surrounding Girl Scout cookies. The documentary raises potentially interesting questions about childhood entrepreneurship, parental pressure, commercialism and ambition, but some critics believe it does not pursue those questions deeply enough.
That criticism is important because the film’s premise could have supported a much broader examination of what happens when childhood, business and competition collide. Instead, reviewers have found the final product uneven, with its strongest moments often coming from the young participants themselves.
However, describing the movie as an outright critical disaster would be misleading.
The critical picture is considerably more mixed. Rotten Tomatoes currently lists Cookie Queens among Meghan Markle’s highest-rated projects, while reviews collected by Metacritic include positive assessments praising its accessible approach and the personalities of its young subjects.
That creates an intriguing contradiction: the documentary has attracted considerably warmer critical attention from some outlets than its box-office performance might suggest.
The problem may therefore be less about whether audiences dislike the film and more about whether enough people were motivated to pay for a theatrical ticket to see it.
Documentaries already face a difficult theatrical market, particularly when audiences increasingly expect this type of content to appear on streaming platforms. Cookie Queens also arrived during a crowded summer movie season, making it harder for a relatively small documentary to compete for attention.
For Meghan and Harry, however, the disappointing opening inevitably adds another layer to the continuing scrutiny surrounding their Hollywood ambitions.
Their 2022 Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan generated enormous global attention, setting a very high benchmark for subsequent projects. Since then, their various entertainment ventures have received considerably more varied reactions.
Cookie Queens may eventually find a more receptive audience outside cinemas. But for now, its first weekend has created an awkward headline for the Sussexes: a project carrying their Hollywood ambitions has struggled to turn publicity into ticket sales.
And that could prove to be the more significant challenge facing Meghan’s entertainment career—not whether critics love or hate the project, but whether audiences are willing to show up for it.
