In the first five years of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s production partnership with Netflix, I often wondered why they didn’t attach themselves (or rather Archewell) to projects in development, especially documentaries and docuseries. There was probably too much emphasis on developing their own stuff from scratch, when really they could have started out by hopping onto existing projects and helping other people get financing or support. Well, it looks like that’s going to be Archewell 2.0, under the Sussexes’ new Netflix deal. Last week, it was announced that Harry and Meghan had come on board the documentary Cookie Queens. They executive-produced the doc, which will premiere at Sundance. This week, there’s a new Archewell announcement: they’ve signed on to produce an adaptation of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date.
Netflix has enlisted Girls Trip scribe Tracy Oliver to adapt The Wedding Date from New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory, with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry set to produce for Archewell, alongside Tracy Ryerson.
The Wedding Date sees a chance elevator encounter on the part of a career-driven political strategist lead to posing as a stranger’s wedding date. While the strategist had stopped believing in romance, she discovers that love has a way of showing up when you least expect it. Marking the first novel in Guillory’s Wedding Date series, The Wedding Date was published in January 2018.
Oliver first broke out in 2017 with the comedy Girls Trip, becoming the first Black woman to write a film that grossed over $100 million at the global box office. She went on to write Little, The Sun Is Also a Star, and the horror-comedy The Blackening, also creating and exec producing the TV series First Wives Club and Amazon’s Harlem. On the television side, she currently has multiple projects in active development, including two book-based thriller dramas: Paper Gods at Netflix and Not a Happy Family at Starz. In film, she’s developing Girls Trip 2, The Blackening 2, and Deck the Y’alls, a holiday film starring Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain.
In business with Netflix since 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell extended its creative partnership with the streamer via a multi-year, first-look deal earlier this year. Their partnership has so far generated documentaries, scripted series, films, sports, and lifestyle programming, with releases including Polo, With Love, Meghan, Heart of Invictus, Harry & Meghan, and Live to Lead.
Coming off the release of With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration, a special holiday episode of the top-rated unscripted series With Love, Meghan, as well as the Netflix documentary short Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within, Archewell’s upcoming slate also includes the romance Meet Me at the Lake, based on the bestseller by Carley Fortune. Markle has also partnered with Netflix on the lifestyle brand, As ever, and both she and Prince Harry are EPs on the Sundance-bound doc Cookie Queens, as we recently revealed.
I watched The Blackening and it surprised me – it was trying to be elevated comedic horror but I wish they had leaned into one or the other, either straight horror or make it a lot funnier. As for this adaptation… I assume that if it’s successful, then that would lead the way to making more films based on the book series (which I haven’t read, my bad). I also wonder if Archewell went and made this happen or if they were basically approached by Netflix to step in and help develop this. Anyway, it’s interesting that we’re getting all of this late-in-the-year announcements about/from Archewell Productions.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.