The 10-episode series The Young Pope, which starred Jude Law as a chain-smoking, extremely conservative American pontiff, is getting a follow-up, reports Variety. HBO has ordered a second papal limited series from creator and director Paolo Sorrentino which is set to go into production in 2018, but don’t expect to see too much more of Law’s character, whose fate at the end of The Young Pope was uncertain. While Variety’s source won’t out rule an appearance entirely, the show is not a direct sequel and will have, for the most part, an all-new cast.
“Sorrentino is writing the script for the new show, but it will have a different twist than what would be expected,” said Andrea Scrosati, Sky Italia’s chief of content. (It’ll be hard to out-twist a show that gave us a pyramid of babies and an LMFAO song.) Otherwise, details about the new series are incredibly scarce: All we really know for sure is that it’s “set in the world of the modern papacy” and that it will be called … The New Pope.
That’s disappointing.
The Young Pope had a ridiculous, meme-worthy title that got people interested in the series, even if it turned out that the show wasn’t actually about a Catholic rapper, as we originally surmised. In comparison, The New Pope sounds boring and ordinary. Fans will probably stick with Sorrentino on the strength of the show’s predecessor, but we thought the new title was so anticlimactic that we went ahead and came up with our own, more absurd alternatives, along with possible plots.
The Young Pope 2: Pope Younger
This show would operate under a similar premise to The Young Pope’s, except that instead of a pope in his forties, the star would be a recent college graduate whose dialogue is generated by the Tweetbot Millennial Pope.
The Invisible Pope
In The Young Pope, Lenny’s marketing strategy is to hide himself away from the public and become “the invisible pope,” avoiding pictures and appearing only in shadow, to maximize his impact. It would a lot more fun if the show took this idea literally and made an entire show about a pope by day, invisible superhero by night.
Every Which Way But Pope
This one is just a remake of the 1978 comedy starring Clint Eastwood as a trucker-turned-prizefighter who travels with his pet orangutan, except it all takes place in the Vatican and the orangutan is actually a kangaroo.
Star Wars: A New Pope
The pope already wears plenty of capes, so they’re halfway there.
