“The New Pope” might have a different title than its predecessor, “The Young Pope,” but make no mistake, the new HBO limited series is very much a sequel. Picking up less than a year after the shocking end of “The Young Pope,” director Paolo Sorrentino returns with a new story of the papacy and the drama that follows the highest title in the Catholic Church.
As seen in the new trailer, the sequel series tells the story of what happened after the medical emergency incapacitated Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law), leaving a new Pope, played by John Malkovich, in control. And as you might expect, just because Malkovich might be seen as an older, wiser leader of the church, his character is maybe even more flawed than the previous, offbeat leader.
We caught a special screening of episodes of the series when they premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival. In our review, we said, “And therein lies what makes ‘The New Pope’ so fascinating: it’s more than just a secular, skeptical take on sectarianism. It’d be easy, after all, to vacuously take down an institution so vehemently corrupt as the Vatican. What Sorrentino does here is interrogate core aspects of the human condition – death, grief, loneliness, suffering, sex – through a lens of religiosity. Ultimately, it’s excellent.”
Joining Law and Malkovich in the new season are returning cast members Silvio Orlando, Javier Cámara, Cécile de France, Ludivine Sagnier, and Maurizio Lombardi. The new episodes do add some new cast to the ranks including Henry Goodman, Ulrich Thomsen, Mark Ivanir, Yuliya Snigir, and Massimo Ghini, as well as guest stars Sharon Stone and Marilyn Manson.
The sequel series arrives on HBO in January 2020.
You can watch the new trailer below: