Are you ready to take a trip back to Newark? Deadline reports that The Sopranos creator David Chase is reportedly in talks with WarnerMedia to create a Sopranos prequel series for HBOMax.
The news comes hot off the trails of the Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, which starred Michael Gandolfini, son of late Sopranos star James Gandolfini, as a young Tony Soprano. WarnerMedia CEO Ann Sarnoff told Deadline that the studio was “thrilled” with how Saints of Newark performed, revealing that the media company was “talking to David about a new series, Sopranos related, on HBO Max,” she said.
As for Chase, he reportedly said that he’d return only if the events of the series took place in between The Many Saints of Newark, which is set in the 1960s and 1970s, and the HBO series which begins in 1998. His other stipulation? That Sopranos writer and executive producer Terry Winter co-wrote the series with him. “There’s only one way that I would do it, and that was if Terry [Winter] and I could write the script together. That I would do.”
While no official decision has been made yet, Sarnoff points to the bump that The Many Saints of Newark gave to The Sopranos as proof that there’s still a vested interest in the franchise. “You see The Sopranos pop into the top ten of viewed series on the service and it’s given it an entirely new life,” she said. “It’s literally lifted all of The Sopranos franchise in a new way. You can’t measure just by the box office.”
HBOMax is already betting on the prequel and sequel potential of two other beloved franchises. House of the Dragon, a prequel series to Game of Thrones, hits the streaming platform in 2022, while And Just Like That, a sequel series to Sex and the City, debuts on HBO Max in December. Time will tell if they’ll be joined by a fresh-faced Tony Soprano.
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