The 2007 finale of The Sopranos, widely regarded as one of the best TV dramas ever made, is one of the most controversial of all time – it’s right up there with Seinfeld’s courtroom final episode.
But now fans of the Emmy-winning show have reason to be very excited as the programme’s creator David Chase has announced a prequel film with the working title ‘The Many Saints of Newark’.
According to Deadline, the HBO film will be set during the 1960s riots in Newark, New Jersey.
The publication says: “That was a time when the African-Americans and the Italians of Newark were at each other’s throats, and amongst the gangsters of each group, those conflicts became especially lethal.
“Some of the beloved characters from the series will appear in the film… the time period indicates there will be room for Tony Soprano’s father, Giovanni ‘Johnny Boy,’ the former captain of the Soprano crew (played in flashbacks by Joseph Siravo), and a younger version of his wife Livia (played indelibly in the show’s first season by Nancy Marchand), and Tony’s uncle Junior, played by Chianese.”
“David is a masterful storyteller and we, along with our colleagues at HBO, are thrilled that he has decided to revisit, and enlarge, the Soprano universe in a feature film,” Noah Emmerich, Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman, said in a statement.
The Sopranos, which ran from 1999 to 2007, was led by James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano), who died in 2013 in Rome, Italy, of a heart attack.
Fans of the original show have been sharing their (mixed) emotions about the news on Twitter:
(Image: REX / HBO)
