After Pope's Death, Ralph Fiennes Flick Gets a Boost

As the world awaits the papal conclave that will replace the late Pope Francis with a new head of the Catholic Church, many are taking to their TV remotes to get an idea of how that process works—specifically, by watching the Oscar-winning movie Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes. NBC News cites data from entertainment data firm Luminate that shows viewership across various platforms—Netflix, Peacock, Max, etc.—streaming the Edward Berger film jumped 283% in the 24 hours after Francis' death.

• More stats: For comparison on how big the spike was, the movie was watched an average of 1.8 million minutes on Sunday; on Monday, the day the pope died at age 88, that number rose to 6.9 million minutes, according to Luminate. By the end of Tuesday, when the movie was released on Amazon Prime Video, that figure had reached 18.3 million minutes.

• The appeal: Intrigue around "the ancient rituals of the Catholic Church" and the "secret process" by which a new pope is chosen is a likely factor in why people have taken to Conclave, Villanova University religion and law professor Michael Moreland tells NBC. An online fan of the movie adds, "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."
• Fact-checking the film: Although the star-studded Conclave is entertaining and "relatively accurate" in its depiction of the papal conclave, per NBC, People notes that some things were tweaked for the big screen.
• Popes on film: Axios reports that Conclave isn't the only movie that has seen renewed interest, noting that 2019's The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, saw its US viewership on Netflix rise by 417%. Variety has a few other suggestions for flicks in the "picking a new pope" genre.

(More Pope Francis stories.)