‘The Young Pope’ Is Dead, Long Live ‘The New Pope’

If you were on Film or TV Twitter this winter, you likely saw Jude Law‘s performance in “The Young Pope” become something of a sensation. The actor shined in the titular role in Paolo Sorrentino‘s rather bonkers drama, and last fall word emerged that the director was already working on the second season. Well, a new season of the Pope drama is coming, but it won’t feature Law.

Rather than making a second season featuring Lenny Belardo, Sorrentino is now writing “The New Pope,” which will offer a new spin on the wheelings and dealings inside the walls of the Vatican.

“Just like ‘The Young Pope,’ Sorrentino is writing the script for the new show, but it will have a different twist than what would be expected,” Sky Italia‘s Andrea Scrosati said to Variety. Intriguingly, while Law won’t be back, reportedly the new series will call back to “The Young Pope” and even feature some recurring characters, so it’ll be interesting to see how this new series takes shape. It does seem clear that the show is taking an anthology style approach, not unlike “Fargo” or “True Detective.”

Sorrentino’s immediate project is his Silvio Berlusconi movie “Loro,” starring Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), which will shoot this summer, and the plan is to film “The New Pope” in the fall of 2018, which likely doesn’t mean an airdate until late 2019 at the earliest.