Back in October, I wrote an article on the fascination around Luca Guadagnino’s hit film Challengers, and the impact it had on tennis as a sport and in the media. The film gave the following summer’s Grand Slam Championships a new level of exposure, and created an online aesthetic for the sport based on the lifestyle of the characters involved. The role that social media played in creating a new image for tennis, based on the version of the sport portrayed in the film, helped it develop a cult following that still flourishes to this day. Despite the vastly different style and plots, Conclave and Challengers have both managed to generate online followings and remain relevant within popular culture, simply by depicting fictional versions of real-life events.
Ahead of its Time
When Conclave received a UK release in November of last year, it was welcomed with critical acclaim for creating an accurate representation of the famously secretive process of selecting the next leader of the Catholic Church. Unsurprisingly, it became a contender in the upcoming awards run, which is where the power of social media generated hype and created a cult following for the film. In February, a live reading of the screenplay was hosted by Film Independent as part of the film’s Oscar campaign, which included Hollywood stars who were not members of the actual cast, such as Ayo Edebiri, Patton Oswalt, and Jason Mantzoukas. The event grew the film’s popularity massively and saw dedicated social media pages assert the film’s cult following.
X page ‘Pope Crave’, a spin on popular culture page ‘Pop Crave’, steadily grew its following over the awards season, and has contributed significantly to the film’s overall fan culture. Along with other sites and pages dedicated to the film (including a fan-made video game version of Conclave), Pope Crave maintained the film’s relevancy in the months after the Academy Awards, leading to the most remarkable of situations after Pope Francis’ passing on Easter Monday.
A Timely Resurgence
Even when the film’s popularity eventually started to slip, the presence of a real-life conclave, only five months after the film’s release, pushed it into the stratosphere of pop culture. In the week of Pope Francis’ death, Conclave jumped to fourth on the list of ‘most popular films viewed in the last seven days’ on fan-based review site Letterboxd. Then, during the week of the conclave itself, the film rose again to third.
Though cinephiles and cult fans may be responsible for Conclave’s return to Letterboxd charts, the film has been further enjoyed by the real-world manifestations of its characters. A cleric involved in the conclave itself revealed to Politico that some Cardinals had watched it in cinemas ahead of the papal election. The brother of the newly elected Pope, Leo XIV, also revealed to Good Morning America that the film had reached the new head of the Catholic Church, truly demonstrating the scope of engagement.
Real-World Accuracy
Conclave’s remarkable real-world accuracy has certainly helped give it its position in popular media and make it a talking point in the news and not just social media. The two have also overlapped, with Pope Crave recently interviewed by Time Magazine to discuss the connection between Conclave and the real-life event. Pope Crave also acted as a media outlet during the conclave, with on-the-ground reporters allowing the page to post up-to-date news about the election, and even beat other news sources to announcing whether the smoke out of the famous Sistine Chapel chimney was white or black. I, for one, am happy to admit that I found out that a new pope had been chosen because I was checking Pope Crave’s X page.
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The overlap of fiction and reality seen with the two conclaves feels like an unlikely phenomenon. The election of a new pope is a major international news event, and for a film displaying the process to be released less than six months prior to it happening feels almost hard to believe. It is difficult to think of another occasion where a coincidence of these heights has happened in film or television before, and it could be that the unique nature of the situation is the very reason for the film’s position in popular culture and its niche following on social media. Last spring, sites such as X and TikTok seemed set for a ‘Challengers Summer’. Now, pages like Pope Crave and its nearly 100,000 followers seem set to keep the hype around the film alive as we head towards the rather unexpected, ‘Conclave Summer’.