David Chase Revives ‘The Sopranos’ With Prequel Movie

David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, is reviving the series with a newly announced prequel movie.

Reportedly, New Line has bought the rights to The Many Saints of Newark, a screenplay that Chase wrote with Lawrence Konner about the Newark riots that took place in the 1960s.

The Newark riots represented a dark time in American history, as the African-American and Italian communities in New Jersey were locked in heated conflicts with one another.

Deadline reports that The Many Saints of Newark is the current working title so that could change before the film comes out.

While the film takes place pre-Tony Soprano era, there’s a good chance that it will feature his father, Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano.

Chase will serve as a producer on the film as well as a writer. He will also assist in selecting a director.

The Sopranos ran on HBO from 1999 to 2007 and starred James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Dominic Chianese, Steven Van Zandt, Tony Sirico, Robert Iler, and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

Throughout its six seasons and 86 episodes, the series earned 21 Primetime Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.

After the series ended, Chase didn’t take on another project until the 2012 film Not Fade Away, about a group of friends in 1960s suburban New Jersey who “form a rock band and try to make it big.”

That film would end up being one of the last movies that Sopranos star James Gandolfini ever filmed as he died the following year.

In a Guardian interview after Gandolfini’s death, Chase spoke fondly of the actor, saying, “There is something immensely lovable about him and something immensely interesting. I don’t know which came first.”

“There was a quality, I think – maybe it’s my taste showing – but there was a quality of sadness he had. I’ve been thinking about it recently, and my feeling is that you saw in him a little boy. The lost, hurt, little boy. He stood for all lost little boys,” Chase added.

Elaborating on the relationship the two men shared, Chase said that even though he often referred to Gandolfini as his “brother” things between them were “complicated.”

“When I say brother, I mean brother: we didn’t always get along. We didn’t always agree. He understood me on some level, I would say that. I can’t say whether he would say it was the same for him,” Chase explained. “But he understood me and I think we had a great deal in common even though we had different tastes in a lot of things, different ways of dealing with things. Another word for that would be soulmate, I guess.”