God has (maybe) answered our prayers—Paulo Sorrentino’s weirdly great The Young Pope and its sequel series The New Pope might be blessed with a third follow-up. The news was hinted at by series producer Lorenzo Mieli while speaking during a keynote at the London Film Festival, reports Deadline.
“There is an idea that Paolo has that maybe is going to happen. The third and last,” said the Italian producer behind The Hand Of God.
Looks like Sorrentino’s series of popes will be a trilogy, ending with a finale continuation that will have a title which includes an adjective in between words like “the” and “pope.” Perhaps something like, The Final Pope? Or maybe Sorrentino wants to end the running trend and go for the simple, yet dramatic title of The Pope. We won’t know until a confirmation comes from Sorrentino, or until there’s even any news related to HBO picking up the new season.
As well as that little tidbit about the future of HBO’s Pope saga, Mieli discussed at the festival how Sorrentino’s pitch about a hardcore American pope captured him enough to get involved with the project.
“He brought me an idea about a pope, an American pope, that smokes cigarettes. That was the pitch, and I said fantastic. That seemed to me a very good pitch,” told the My Brilliant Friend producer to the audience at the keynote.
Premiering in 2016, The Young Pope stars Jude Law as Lenny Belardo, the first American Pope in the history of the Vatican. After a bit of a break, Sorrentino’s pope series returned with The New Pope in 2020, replacing Law’s Pope Pius XIII with John Malkovich’s not-so-young John Paul III. With Silvio Orlando’s Cardinal Voiello ascending as the new-new pope by the end of The New Pope, we’ll have to wait and see if someone else comes in to fight for the role as supreme pontiff.