As reported by Deadline, Jude Law has officially joined HBO’s Young Pope, the upcoming eight-part miniseries from Paulo Sorrentino (This Must Be The Place). Law will play Pius XIII, a newly chosen Pope who is young (obviously), American, and highly conservative—“yet full of compassion towards the weak and poor,” according to Deadline. Over the course of Young Pope, he will deal with his “constant fear of being abandoned, even by his God,” but he’s “not afraid of undertaking the millennial mission of defending that same God.” Deadline quotes a very long statement from Sorrentino about what Young Pope is truly “about,” but it all boils down to “how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbor.”
So, yeah, it all sounds a bit heavy—and it screams “prestige drama”—but considering that it’s an HBO miniseries, we shouldn’t really expect anything less. Young Pope will begin production this summer, so the various award nominations that it will surely receive are still a ways off.