AceShowbiz -

Jude Law could be heading to the small screen as a fictitious pope. The British actor is in advanced negotiations to take the lead role as the first Italian-American pope in history on a high-concept TV series which is being developed under the working title "The Young Pope", according to Italian media as quoted by Variety.

Italian Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino is writing the script along with Umberto Contarello, Stefano Rulli and Tony Grisoni. Grisoni recently described Law's character as "a hard-line conservative American pontiff recruited by a Vatican fed up with liberals." He further said, "No one, even at the Vatican, is prepared for how hard-line this American pope really is."

Lorenzo Mieli and Mario Gianani are producing the series and Rupert Murdoch's Sky Italia paybox has snagged the rights to air it in Italy. The ambitous big-budget show is "about dreams, fears, conflicts, battles, the search for meaning and the need for love of a pope, seen through the prism of Sorrentino's unique vision capable of creating worlds that are at the same incredible and more real than reality itself."

The eight-episode English-language show will be set in Vatican City and the U.S. Filming is planned to start in July at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, Italy. Sorrentino will also make his TV directing debut with the project.