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As the Vatican prepares for the election of a new pope, many around the world are doing their own preparations — by watching a movie about it.
After news of Pope Francis’ death broke Monday, the film “Conclave” had a viewership boost across streaming platforms it was available to watch on, according to Luminate, an entertainment data analytics company.
Edward Berger’s drama, which won the Oscar this year for best adapted screenplay, goes behind the scenes of the Vatican for the secretive process of electing a pope. The process is complicated further by power-hungry cardinals, played by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow. (The film’s distributor is Focus Features, a unit of NBC News’ parent corporation, Comcast.)
Since its release in October, the movie has spawned a fervent fan base online, with many social media users circulating a slew of viral memes and passionate fan edits comparing it to pop culture staples like “The Real Housewives” and “Mean Girls.”
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Existing fans and a new wave of viewers sought it out this week as tributes to Pope Francis poured in from around the world.
From Sunday to Monday, viewership spiked 283%, according to Luminate, which measures viewership data across major platforms in the United States, including Peacock, Netflix, Paramount+, Max and Disney+. The movie was watched an average of 1.8 million minutes Sunday. The number surged to 6.9 million minutes watched Monday, Luminate said.
A spokesperson for Focus Features did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the streaming data.
On social media, many pointed out that the film’s plot mirrored current news headlines, including stories about who could succeed Pope Francis.
Some “Conclave” fans did not appear surprised by the film’s resurgence in the zeitgeist.
“I think there’s a lot of grief and pain attached to current events, and being able to use Conclave memes as a common/shared language of community offers some brevity and humor to a clandestine process and historical event that will significantly alter the trajectory of many peoples’ lives,” said the administrator behind Pope Crave, a fan account on X that is dedicated to all things “Conclave.”
Pope Crave, who has 16,000 followers on X, asked NBC News by email to use only their username, citing a need for “separation” between their professional work and “fandom extracurriculars.”
“I cannot speak for the religious breakdown of ‘Conclave’ fans, but it doesn’t shock me that Catholic fans of the film would be engaged in the actual papal conclave outcomes,” Pope Crave said. “And for the non-Catholic ‘Conclave’ fans, I would hypothesize there’s something to be said about the abrupt relevance and sudden application of their film knowledge and fandom enthusiasm to a seismically important current global event that holds importance to over 1.25 billion practitioners (and even more non-believers).”
Michael Moreland, a professor of law and religion at Villanova University, said the mass appeal of “Conclave” captured how, even in a secular modern age, there is still pervasive intrigue around “the ancient rituals of the Catholic Church.”
The conclave process involves a gathering of Catholic Church cardinals, who are senior advisers to the pope (based in the Vatican or around the world), under age 80. Bound by an oath of secrecy, the cardinals vote in the Sistine Chapel via paper ballots until a pope is elected by a two-thirds majority.
“All the charisma and the mystery around Catholicism and the ways in which these men in the College of Cardinals go about assembling and deliberating and voting in the secret process that no one except one of them has seen,” Moreland said, “all of that is very fascinating.”
“Conclave” paints a relatively accurate picture of the way candidates rise and fall throughout the intense balloting process, which can last for however many days it takes to reach the required two-thirds vote, Moreland said. He was disappointed, however, in the film’s outsize focus on “crude right-left divides.”
“The significance of the theological and spiritual aspects of Catholicism and this process of electing a pope was kind of reduced into partisan politics,” he said.
On Tuesday, “Conclave” was made available to stream on Amazon Prime. The timing was coincidental, according to Amazon, as the movie was already scheduled to release on the streaming platform this month.
As of Tuesday afternoon, many stars of “Conclave” had not yet issued any statements about Francis’ death.
However, in February, when he was in critical condition, the cast addressed the timeliness of the film at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“The film has ended up extremely timely … and it’s about the social organism electing a leader,” Lithgow, who played Cardinal Tremblay, one of the film’s antagonists who is among the front-runners to become the next pope, told reporters.
“You cannot help seeing ‘Conclave’ and not thinking what happens when different tribes quarrel with each other trying to decide on who is their leader,” he added. “That’s one big reason why people are paying attention to ‘Conclave,’ beyond the fact that it’s simply a beautiful film that you just don’t see storytelling on film like that much anymore.”
The funeral for Francis will be at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) Saturday in St. Peter’s Square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican said. The conclave will follow the funeral.