‘Conclave’ wins Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Movie has N.J. connection.

A tightly composed story of papal intrigue has won the 2025 Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

“Conclave,” a political thriller set at the Vatican during the selection of a new pope, wins the Academy Award.

It’s the first Oscar for British screenwriter Peter Straughan, who was previously nominated in the same category for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” with co-writer Bridget O’Connor, his late wife, in 2012.

“Conclave” was nominated for eight Oscars at the 97th Academy Awards.

The Focus Features film, directed by Edward Berger (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) and starring an ensemble cast led by English Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes, has a New Jersey connection through producer Michael Jackman, who lives in Westfield.

Jackman spent six months living in Rome during the making of the film, he told NJ Advance Media in a recent interview.

He is nominated for the Oscar for best picture alongside his fellow “Conclave” producers Tessa Ross and Juliette Howell from the United Kingdom.

Jackman said Ross and Howell optioned the 2016 Robert Harris novel “Conclave” after reading just three chapters and hired Straughan to adapt the story for film.

READ MORE: Inside ‘Conclave’ with N.J. producer behind Oscar-nominated movie winning awards

Berger, the director and the actors sought for the cast were very responsive to the tale of a pressure cooker atmosphere following the sudden death of a pope.

“If you have something wonderful to read, it certainly opens those doors,” Jackman, 62, told NJ Advance Media.

The producer was born in New York and lived in Paramus during his early childhood before growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eventually moving back to New Jersey and settling in Westfield with his family.

“Conclave” won best picture at the BAFTAs in London last month as well as best British film. Straughan’s pre-Oscars awards haul was particularly significant, having won best adapted screenplay at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes.

“Conclave” also won outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Jackman had high praise for the cast.

“There isn’t a whole lot that Ralph can’t do,” he told NJ Advance Media of Fiennes, who received his third Oscar nomination for playing Cardinal Thomas Lawrence in the film. “He’s so talented, he’s so committed to a role. He takes parts that really appeal to him, that he can connect with, but I feel like he could probably connect with anything.”

Isabella Rossellini received her first Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for playing Sister Agnes in the movie.

“I think I may have been more excited that Isabella was nominated than that I was nominated,” Jackman said. “Her performance was just brilliant, but she’s also so lovely.”

The cast also includes Oscar nominees Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow, Zimbabwean actor Lucian Msamati, Italian actor Sergio Castellitto and Mexican actor Carlos Diehz in his film debut.

Casting director Nina Gold conducted a worldwide search for the role of Cardinal Vincent Benitez and made quite the discovery in Diehz, who lives in Vancouver.

“He had something just very natural about him,” Jackman told NJ Advance Media.

“We wanted someone that not only would the audience not know, but that our other actors wouldn’t know, someone that would come to the table with just something new.”

The elaborate “Conclave” set included a recreation of the Sistine Chapel built at the Cinecittà movie studio in Rome.

“We built the walls of the side about 45 feet high, and in the front and back about 60 feet, so that we had (Michelangelo’s) 'The (Last) Judgment' in front of everyone and Ralph could look up and see that, as could all the other cardinals," Jackman told NJ Advance Media. “That was kind of a special thing, because you really felt the size of that room. It’s meant to make the cardinals think, that’s what it’s there for.”

The Oscar win for “Conclave” arrives not long after the real pope, Pope Francis, suffered respiratory distress.

“Conclave,” rated PG, is streaming on Peacock and available on demand.

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter/X, @amykup.bsky.social on Bluesky and @kupamy on Instagram and Threads.