Tom Fontana, best known for creating the series Oz, is set to create and showrun a new Vatican drama series based on Emanuele Midolo’s forthcoming novel The Devil’s Business, after Fabel Entertainment scored book rights.
The Devil’s Business, which is set to publish in June 2028, centers on Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American clergyman known as “The Pope’s Bodyguard.”
Midolo is an award-winning investigations correspondent with The Sunday Times’ Insight team, whose reporting has led to political resignations in the U.K. and nominations for the U.K. Society of Editors’ Scoop of the Year and Investigation of the Year.
Set in the 1980s, the series will follow Marckinkus from his beginnings as Pope Paul VI’s unofficial bodyguard to his tenure at the helm of the Vatican’s finances.
As is told in Midolo’s book, Marcinkus — who was known to say, “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys” — “wielded immense power during an era of astonishing scandals involving embezzlement, money laundering, kidnapping, poison and alleged staged suicide,” according to a press release via Variety.
Fontana said of the project, “I’ve wanted to tell this story for decades, I love this world, and Emanuele’s book has given us a new window into Marcinkus.
I’m grateful for the chance to finally bring to life a complex man who lives in the grey area between sinner and saint. His is a cautionary tale for our swiftly changing times.”
