A new feature film on the transition between Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis is set to be made for Netflix.

Anthony Hopkins will reportedly play Benedict while Francis will be portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, who plays the radical 'priest' High Sparrow in the popular series Game of Thrones.

The film, entitled The Pope, will cover the period from February 28, 2013, when the then Pope Benedict shocked the Catholic world by stepping down, preparing the ground for the election of his less conservative successor, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who took the pontifical name Francis.

It is directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose credits include the movies City of God and The Constant Gardener.

The screenplay is by Anthony McCarten, who wrote The Theory of Everything.

Hopkins, who is most famous for his role as a serial killer in the horror film The Silence of the Lambs, more recently played a priest exorcist in the 2011 movie The Rite.

Filming for The Pope is reportedly set to begin in November.

The election of a pope was the subject of the internationally best-selling novel by the British author Robert Harris last September, called Conclave. Harris, who spoke to Christian Today about the book, visited the Vatican and interviewed a cardinal as part of his extensive research for the book.