Actor Jude Law is reportedly heading to the small screen as a fictitious pope. The British actor is in advanced negotiations to take the lead role as the first Italian-
American pope in histo-ry on a high-concept TV series which is being devel-oped under the working title “The Young Pope”, reported Variety. Ita-lian Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino is writing the script along with Umberto Contarello, Stef-ano Rulli and Tony Grisoni.
Grisoni recently des-cribed Law’s character as “a hard-line conservative American pontiff recruited by a Vatican fed up with liberals.” He further said, “No one, even at the Vati-can, is prepared for how hard-line this American pope really is.”
L Mieli and M Gianani are producing the series and Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Italia paybox has snagged to air it in Italy. The ambi-tous big-budget show is “about dreams, fears, con-flicts, bat-tles, the search for meaning and the need for love of a pope, seen thro-ugh the prism of Sorren-tino’s unique vision capable of crea-ting worlds that are at the same incredi-ble and more real than reality itself.
“The eight-episode English language show will be set in Vatican City and the US Filming is planned to start in July at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, Italy. (PTI)
