Tom Fontana to Run Vatican Drama The Devil's Business

Tom Fontana will create and showrun a new Vatican drama based on Emanuele Midolo's novel 'The Devil's Business'.

A showrunner, meaning the writer-producer in charge of a series from scripts to set, Fontana will lead the adaptation for television. Variety reported the project on 20 October 2026.

Fabel Entertainment has acquired the rights to the book and is driving the development, meaning it is shaping scripts and a production plan before any filming is confirmed. The company will produce alongside Picomedia, the Italian production house that sits within the Fremantle group. Book-to-screen deals of this kind usually start with a rights purchase, then writers are hired to test how the story plays across episodes.

The planned series centres on Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, a Catholic cleric nicknamed 'The Pope's Bodyguard'. Set in the 1980s, it follows his move from acting as Pope Paul VI's unofficial protector to taking charge of the Vatican's finances. That journey places one man at the crossing point of faith, loyalty and money.

Midolo's book has not been published yet. Century is scheduled to release 'The Devil's Business' in June 2028, as reported by Variety. Selling screen rights this early, before readers can buy a copy, gives producers a head start but means the show will develop alongside the final stages of the book.

Midolo writes as an investigations correspondent with The Sunday Times' Insight team. That background means the source material grows out of reporting rather than a purely invented story. For a viewer with no background on the case, that signals a drama rooted in documented events.

What makes this stand out is the timing and the team. A television adaptation is already in motion while the novel is still more than a year and a half from publication. The production pairing also crosses borders, with developer Fabel working with Italian partner Picomedia to tell a Vatican-set story.

For people watching at home, this means patience is required. Development, the stage where writers break stories and draft scripts, can take months or years before a series is ordered and filmed. Casting, a channel or platform, and a filming date have not been announced. If it moves forward, the Marcinkus story would arrive as a period drama, meaning a show set in a past decade with its clothes, politics and music rebuilt for the screen.