Fabel Entertainment joins Tom Fontana to adapt Vatican bank scandal book

Tom Fontana

Metin Huseyin

Fabel Entertainment has secured the TV adaptation rights to forthcoming book The Devil’s Business, with Oz creator Tom Fontana onboard to create and showrun the series.

London-based Fabel will produce a period drama based on Emanuele Midolo’s book about Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the US clergyman known as The Pope’s Bodyguard, which is set to be published by Penguin Books imprint Century in June 2028.

Henrik Bastin

Midolo is an award-winning investigations correspondent with Insight, The Sunday Times’ investigative team in London.

Fabel is leading development of the series and will produce alongside Fremantle-owned Italian prodco Picomedia. Fremantle also holds a minority stake in Fabel.

For Midolo, the adaptation also brings the opportunity to work with Fontana, creator of Oz, a series he grew up watching, he said. Oz debuted on HBO in 1997 as the network’s first-ever original one-hour drama series.

Fontana, whose credits also include Homicide: Life on the Street and Borgia, will bring Marcinkus’ story to television, from his beginnings as Pope Paul VI’s unofficial bodyguard to his tenure at the helm of the Vatican’s finances.

Set against the Vatican’s financial and political dealings in the 1980s, the series will explore faith, corruption and unchecked power at the centre of one of the world’s most influential institutions.

Midolo’s reporting has led to high-profile political resignations in the UK and he has been nominated for both Scoop of the Year and Investigation of the Year by the UK Society of Editors. He is the co-author of Murder in Cairo: Solving a Cold War Spy Mystery and has written for publications across the UK, France and Italy.

Midolo is represented by Eugenie Furniss at 42. Raffaella De Angelis, head of literary acquisitions, global drama at Fremantle, spearheaded the literary acquisition for Fabel Entertainment. Fontana is represented by UTA and Fabel Entertainment is represented by CAA.

Fontana said: “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.”

Henrik Bastin, CEO at Fabel Entertainment, said: “Ten pages into Manu’s book proposal, we knew we wanted to make this series. In a way it’s a very American story – rising to the top from humble beginnings – only this time, the setting is the Vatican and the man is doing the Pope’s dirty work.”