Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, winner of this year's foreign-language Oscar for The Great Beauty, will write and direct his first TV series, about an imaginary pontiff who becomes the first Italian-American pope in history.
Working-titled The Young Pope, the eight-episode series in 50-minute format aimed at the international market will be co-produced by Lorenzo Mieli and Mario Gianani's Wildside and Rupert Murdoch's Sky Italia pay TV, which will air the show in Italy.
US producer John Lyons, the former president of production at Focus Features, is executive producing.
The series is written by Sorrentino along with his Great Beauty writing partner Umberto Contarello and veteran Italian film and TV screenwriter Stefano Rulli.
The story to be played by an international cast will be set in contemporary Africa, Italy, the Vatican, and the US.
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