His epic saga Vikings has become one of the world’s most popular television shows, even boosting tourism in Scandinavia. The Tudors enjoyed similar success. Now Michael Hirst, the British screenwriter, is joining forces with Hollywood director Martin Scorsese, to make a series about a joint obsession: the Romans.

The Caesars will tell the story of the early rulers of ancient Rome, beginning with the rise to power of Julius Caesar. The pilot has been written, plus the outline for the rest of the season. The plan is to create a television drama, several seasons long. Filming is expected to begin next year in Italy.

Hirst spoke of his excitement about working with one the most significant American directors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Scorsese’s movies, revered for their realism and naturalistic performances, include psychological thrillers and crime dramas like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, both starring Robert De Niro.

Scorsese is “totally passionate about the Romans” and has been “desperate” for many years to make a film or TV drama about them, Hirst said. “He genuinely loves the period and knows a lot about it. He got on the phone to Justin Pollard, my historical adviser. They chatted, partly in Latin, about sources for the stories and Roman poetry.” In Hirst, Scorsese has found a film-maker with a track record of turning history into popular drama. Hirst wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett as the young Tudor queen, which won one Oscar and was nominated for six more, including best picture.

In North America, Vikings drew up to eight million viewers an episode. It has so far had a run of six series, with 90 episodes. Industry website IMDb currently lists it as the world’s number one show, with another blockbuster, Game of Thrones, in fifth place. Hirst said: “It’s sold to just about every country under the sun. They’re showing it in Russia, in China ... It’s everywhere, especially where the Vikings actually reached, which is many places.”

The Tudors spanned four seasons and 37 episodes, won Emmy awards and was nominated for Golden Globes. Jonathan Rhys Meyers starred as a handsome young Henry VIII, nothing like the overweight figure of the famous Holbein portrait.

Martin Scorsese is ‘totally passionate about the Romans’. Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

The Caesars aims to give a new insight into the young Julius Caesar: “In the movies he’s usually a middle-aged guy, struggling with political complexities. But he was fantastically interesting and ambitious when he was younger. A lot of the Caesars came to power when they were young, and we’ve never really seen that on screen. It’s the energy, the vitality, the excess of a young culture that’s being driven by young people. There is something astonishing about the rise of a relatively small kingdom to world power within a very short space of time. It couldn’t have been done by tired old politicos and faded warriors.”

Scorsese’s previous casts have included Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis. Asked about The Caesars cast, Hirst said: “One of the benefits of working with [Scorsese] is that actors want to work with him. We’ll be casting a lot of young actors.”

The drama will draw parallels with today. Hirst said: “The past and the present are virtually the same to me, because it’s just continuity. With the Tudors and Vikings, we make them seem resonant and relevant to people today.”

Hirst has been accused of sexing up history. Hirst noted that Scorsese is “very hot on authenticity” and that he himself spent 10 years at various universities, including Nottingham and Oxford, and regards research as a “joy”.

He says his dramas are not documentaries but the details are rooted in history: “Just like Shakespeare’s history plays, they only start with some historical facts, then the drama takes over. You can’t have both.”

He also observes that Vikings has been hailed in Scandinavia for its authenticity: “I went to the Viking ship museum in Oslo and the curator said, ‘I have to thank you, we have twice as many people coming [here] because of your series. You’ve totally reinvigorated the study of Vikings’.”

As for the Romans, he said, “there’s a marvellous amount of information”, from contemporary accounts to poetry. But he added: “Even contemporary accounts aren’t accurate. If you and I saw the same event, we would report them differently. Every account is partial. There is no pure history.”