Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Production Company Pays $3M for Movie Rights to This Bestselling Fiction Book

(Image credit: Getty)

published 7 August 2023

As their Netflix deal continues, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving from documentaries—think last year’s Harry & Meghan and this month’s Heart of Invictus—and into fiction production, The Daily Express reports. Multiple outlets report that the couple have acquired the movie rights for the romance novel Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune for around $3 million, and that the love story told in the book “echoed the Duke and Duchess’s real-life relationship,” The Daily Express writes.

“The themes of the book gripped the couple, and it was chosen for their first adaptation with Netflix,” a source told The Sun.

"Meet Me at the Lake" by Carley Fortune

The book’s publisher is also Penguin Random House, which published Harry’s bestselling memoir, Spare, earlier this year. “Meet Me at the Lake bears many striking parallels to Harry and Meghan’s own lives and relationship,” The Sun writes. “Main characters Fern Brookbanks and Will Baxter fight mental health problems stemming from childbirth and grief over the death of a parent in a tragic car accident. Harry lost his mother Princess Diana in a crash, and Meghan revealed she suffered deep depression around the birth of son Archie. Fern comes from a broken home like both Harry and Meghan. The book is set in Canada, where Meghan made her name in Toronto-based TV show Suits, and where she and Harry made their first photographed appearance together.” The book, which made The New York Times bestsellers list, also has “steamy sex scenes” and “drug use,” per The Sun.

This marks the first time Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Productions has paid to turn a novel into a fictional drama, but production is stalled at the moment because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games kickoff

“This is their biggest and most significant as producers,” a source told The Sun, and marks the end of Harry and Meghan making projects about their own lives: “That period in their life is over,” a source said.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stand close to one another on stage

This is Fortune’s second book; her first, Every Summer After, was also a hit. The Daily Mail unearthed a 2018 Tweet from Fortune—written shortly before Harry and Meghan’s wedding that May—that said “I’m binging my way through Suits. I felt a bit sheepish about it at first but I’ve decided to own my fandom. SUITS ROCKS, YOU GUYS! (I think that Meghan Markle is going places.)”

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.

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