Conclave Spikes in Views After Pope Francis’ Death

Conclave, the Best Picture-nominated film about choosing a new pope, has spiked in viewership with the passing of Pope Francis.

According to the media tracking agency Luminate, the film was viewed on Amazon Prime for 6.9 million minutes on Monday, the day of the pope's death. That was up from 966,000 the previous Monday.

On Tuesday, after Amazon made the film available at no extra cost to subscribers, the number of minutes shot up to 18.3 million, up from 574,000 the previous Tuesday.

“The data shows an increase of +3,200 percent in week-over-week viewership,” Luminate said.

Interest in Conclave may only increase once the actual conclave to replace Pope Francis begins. Francis, who was 88, died of a stroke and heart failure in residence in the Vatican on Monday, and the conclave will begin after his funeral, which will take place Saturday.

How Accurate Is Conclave?

Though Conclave fictionalizes the rituals involved in the the selection of a new pope, it may be as close to understanding the process as most people will ever get, given the intense secrecy surrounding the process. Dr. Kurt Martens, a professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, told The New York Times the film was “quite accurate, save for a few things.”

Directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and based on Robert Harris’ acclaimed novel, the film is part papal procedural, part thriller. Twists abound as Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), tasked with a sacred duty to oversee the conclave, suffers a crisis of faith while navigating complex competing agendas.

After its release last year, the film drew the attention of both older viewers and younger ones, who surprisingly memefied moments like one of the cardinals in the film vaping.

"I love how it’s appealing to people. Half our U.S. audience was over 55, while the other half was 18 to 55. We got older audiences back into theaters who had been written off while also appealing to younger viewers who love thrillers, and yes, memes of it all definitely helped," producer Michael Jackman told MovieMaker.

The film benefitted from extensive commitment to detail, Jackman explained.

"We built a Sistine Chapel replica, which took 14 weeks of construction. We needed 104 cardinals as extras — that’s thousands of days of labor over the shoot. It’s less expensive in Italy than it is in the U.S., but it’s still labor every day. We filmed over 42 days on a modest budget," he said.

The production also sought out the advice of theology professor Francesco Bonomo and Father Elio Lops, among others, to make sure it portrayed a conclave as accurately as possible.  

"They helped with everything, from how cardinals hold their slip while casting votes to how they interact with nuns or what they wear when not fully dressed for ceremonies," Jackman told MovieMaker.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won one: and Peter Straughan won for Best Adapted Screenplay. At one point, it appeared to some Oscar prognosticators that the film could have Best Picture momentum because of its zeitgeist-timing: Oscar voting coincided with Pope Francis' long hospitalization a few months ago.

But in the end, Anora, a story of a sex worker in a whirlwind marriage to a Russian oligarch's son, earned Best Picture a slew of other Oscars.

Conclave wasn't the only film to spike in popularity as people process Pope Francis' passing. Netflix’s 2019 comedy-drama The Two Popes, which stars Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins as his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, also saw a large increase in viewing.

According to Luminate, the film was viewed for 290,000 minutes on Sunday — Easter Sunday — compared with 1.5 million minutes on Monday.

Main image: Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence and Carlos Diehz as Cardinal Vincent Benitez in Conclave. Focus Features.