, he did exhaustive research in order to make the film as plausible as possible. The movie focused on intense, imagined conversations between two living Popes, Benedict and Francis, at the first time in 700 years that there has been more than one Bishop of Rome alive at the same time. But did he worry that two old guys talking might get boring? “I never bought into that,” he insists.
He isn’t worried about offending the Vatican. They have been in possession of the script for some time, but they didn’t stand in its way, and even approved the use of the real footage of the two Popes at one of their three publicly acknowledged meetings. Since the film has screened, the response from the Church is trickling through. “I think the word [from the Vatican] is relief,” McCarten says. “They’ve had quite a few years of bad press, and quite rightly.