HE’S RUNNING — BUT WHY NOW?!”

It’s midnight at Windsor, fog rolling across the private parklands, and a single jet engine cuts through the silence.

Within minutes, a convoy of dark cars pulls up beside the royal airfield. Out steps a familiar silhouette — a man who looks every inch like Prince Andrew — coat collar turned up, phone pressed to his ear.

That’s the opening scene of “The Midnight Flight,” the latest dramatized royal thriller that’s setting gossip sites ablaze. In the film’s world, Andrew’s quiet country life explodes overnight after staff on his fictional estate stumble upon “something they shouldn’t have seen.” Within hours, the disgraced duke decides to leave the country, triggering a frenzy of rumours, investigations and paparazzi chases worthy of a Bond plot.

Producers say the story isn’t literal truth — it’s “what-if television,” designed to explore how modern royals handle scandal in the digital age. But the resemblance to real-life headlines is, of course, deliberate.