King Charles and Idris Elba Announce Netflix Documentary Project

King Charles III has apparently forgiven Netflix for The Crown—or at least made his peace with it. The royal depicted by Dominic West in the soapy fictionalization of his oft-painful family history has made his own deal with the streaming platform. And it’s one that’ll send fans of David Simon’s iconic HBO series, The Wire, clutching their skulls with the multiversal implications of it all.

King Charles is collaborating with actor Idris Elba for an as-yet-unnamed documentary about The King’s Trust, a charity Charles founded in 1976. Then known as The Prince’s Trust, the organization was founded by Charles using his Navy severance pay of £7,400 to establish grants and initiatives for economically and socially vulnerable populations.

Decades later, a teenage Elba was a recipient of one of those grants. In 2024, the actor said, “Many of us working in the arts today, myself included, only made it because of programs like this when we were young,” crediting the boost it provided with his success to this day.

The actor’s The Elba Hope Foundation announced a joint effort with The King’s Trust last fall, an effort to assist with job training opportunities for young people in the English city of Manchester. The Netflix doc appears to be an expansion of the relationship, as well as a celebration of the organization’s upcoming 50th anniversary.

“The King’s Trust gave me an opportunity that changed my life,” Elba said in a statement announcing the film. “At a time when I didn’t have the resources to pursue my ambitions, they offered real, practical support—including financial help—that helped me take those first steps to advance my career.”

The movie, from Elba’s production company with Diene Petterle, 22 Summers, will show Elba with Charles as the royal explains the Trust’s work over the last 50 years, including how it’s helped over a million young folks around the world.

“The King is pleased for The Trust to have this wonderful opportunity to showcase their work to a global audience,” a Buckingham Palace aide said via statement.

Clare Bradbury is set to direct the documentary, which begins filming next week. And when it does, not only will Charles join estranged son Prince Harry and daughter-in-law Meghan Markle on Netflix’s roster of stars, but he’ll also step more firmly into the Wireaverse, nerds like this correspondent might note.

As acknowledged previously, Netflix cast Dominic West as a fictional Charles a few years ago—and West, as you might remember, made his mark on American culture as The Wire’s Detective Jimmy McNulty. And who was McNulty’s greatest nemesis for the show’s first season, if not longer? One Stringer Bell—otherwise known as Idris Elba in his career-making role.

So if you squint just hard enough when the documentary is released in August of 2026, perhaps you’ll see the Wire reunion so many of us might foolishly, hopelessly wish for. And even if you can’t, well, you’ll still have the king of England and Idris Elba.