Harry and Meghan's new staff member owns rights to movie claiming Diana was killed by royal family

It has emerged that Ben Browning, the Oscar-winning producer who was last week named the head of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archewell Productions and Archewell Audio, owns the rights to a conspiracy movie that claims Princess Diana was murdered by the British royal family.

The movie, titled "Inquest," explores the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana in a fatal car crash in Paris in 1997, including one that claims that Queen Elizabeth II had ordered the assassination of her ex-daughter-in-law because she was pregnant and planning to marry her lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, who also died in the crash. Dodi's father, Egyptian businessman Mohammed Al-Fayed, had previously claimed to a court that Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale and numerous others were all involved in a plot to kill the Princess and his son as they disliked the idea of a non-Christian joining the royal family and that too, when he is married to the mother of the future King (Prince William).

A total of 175 similar conspiracy theories suggested Al-Fayed was investigated in 2004 by a special Police inquiry team called Operation Paget. The aforementioned movie inspired by these events revolves around a fictional London lawyer, Michael Davies, who is hired by Al-Fayed to probe his son's death. Davies' investigation leads him to Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell.

Burrell is himself behind one of the conspiracy theories claiming the role of the royal family in Diana's death. In 2003, he had published a note purportedly written by Diana in which there were allegations that her former husband Prince Charles was "planning 'an accident' in [Diana's] car, brake failure and serious head injury" so that he could marry again.

A number of movies, books, and documentaries have already been made around these conspiracy theories, including "Unlawful Killing," a 2011 documentary directed by Keith Allen and funded by Al-Fayed which was not shown in Britain and got shelved in the US within a year of its release in 2012. The rights to "Inquest" went into a bidding war the next year, and were bought by Browning through his former company, Wayfare Entertainment.

The film is still listed on his personal profile on IMDBPro, which has already been updated to mention his collaboration with Harry and Meghan's non-royal ventures, reports Mail Online. A source explained to the outlet: "It's not unusual for a film to take years in development. What is interesting is that his IMDBPro page, something everyone in Hollywood uses as a resource for contact details or to see what projects someone has in development, has been updated to include his new job at Archewell. And it still mentions he is attached to Inquest as a producer."

The insider also noted that it is standard practice for producers to list projects which are ongoing or still being planned, noting that the "status of the project (Inquest)" is unclear.