'The Sopranos' is getting a Newark-set prequel movie from series creator David Chase
New Jersey's favorite fictional crime family is coming back, but this time, they'll be on the big screen. And they probably will be a lot younger.
New Jersey's favorite fictional crime family is coming back, but this time, they'll be on the big screen. And they probably will be a lot younger.
As Deadline reports, series creator David Chase is at work on The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel movie. Chase wrote the film alongside frequent series collaborator Lawrence Konner.
The film reportedly will be set around the time of the 1967 Newark riots, in which 26 people were killed across four days of chaos. As Deadline notes, the era was underscored by rising racial tensions between African-Americans and Italian-Americans, which sometimes erupted into violence "amongst the gangsters of each group."
Some beloved Sopranos characters, in their younger forms, will appear in the film, but who exactly remains unclear.
Chase has spent most of his career in television, but made his directorial debut with 2012's Not Fade Away, which starred Sopranos lead James Gandolfini, who died in 2013.
Chase has been teasing a new Sopranos installment for months now, first telling Entertainment Weekly in June last year that he couldn't see the show return, "except as a prequel."
The show initially ran on HBO from 1999 to 2007, racking up five Golden Globes and 21 Emmys across its six seasons. It today is considered one of the most innovative series in television history.