Jude Law’s fictional American pope is headed to Venice.
Deadline reports that Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino’s (The Great Beauty, Youth) new TV series The Young Pope will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The premiere will consist of the first two episodes and occur on September 3rd in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema at the Lido di Venezia.
The Young Pope is a modern-day story that centers on Lenny Belardo/Pius XIII (Law), a young and manipulative pope, as he upsets order in the Vatican with his contradictory and befuddling nature. Pius XIII struggles with his position and his own personal demons as he attempts to find God for the good of the people, and for himself.
Starring in The Young Pope with Law are Diane Keaton, Silvio Orlando, Scott Shepherd, Cecile de France, Javier Camara, Ludivine Sagnier, Tony Bertorelli and James Cromwell. Sorrentino wrote the series with Umberto Contarello, Tony Grisoni and Stefano Rulli.
The series comes from Sky, HBO and Canal Plus. It is set to air in October on Sky Atlantic in Italy, the UK, Germany, Ireland and Austria. In France it is set to air in October on Canal Plus. HBO will air The Young Pope sometime this year in the US, though there is no firm date or month announced as of yet.
The Young Pope is another interesting choice in projects for Law in recent years. He had a small part in the Melissa McCarthy-starring Spy as an over-the-top, James Bond style character, and Law appeared in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel as a younger version of Oscar-nominee and phenomenal character actor Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton, The Ghost Writer, In The Bedroom). Law also starred as a blue-collar submarine captain on the search for hidden gold in Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea alongside an international cast that included Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Tobias Menzies, Sergey Kolesnikov, Grigoriy Dobrygin and Konstantin Khabenskiy.
The series is produced by Wildside, Haut et Court TV and Mediapro.