David Chase Offers Insight Into Upcoming ‘Sopranos’ Prequel

David Chase offered a bit on insight into his upcoming Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark. In a new interview with Deadline, the showrunner shared his reasoning for making the movie and a bit of what it will focus on.  

“I was interested in Newark and life in Newark at that time,” Chase told Deadline of what pushed him to make the movie. “I used to go to down there every Saturday night for dinner with my grandparents. But the thing that interested me most was Tony’s boyhood. I was interested in exploring that.”

The movie will focus on Newark’s crime families during the era of the race riots, a time that Tony Soprano is nostalgic for at the beginning of the series.

“It is going to depict when it was good,” he said. “The mafia was very polished at that time, how they dressed and what they did,” he said. “Those traditions were followed more loosely in the series. These weren’t guys who wore tracksuits, back then.”

The timeline of The Sopranos means that Tony will be present but not a player in anything that’s happening.

“The movie will deal with the tensions between the blacks and whites at the time, and Tony Soprano will be part of this, but as a kid,” Chase said, noting that he’s been fascinated with the era of the Newark race riots for a while.

“I was against [the movie] for a long time and I’m still very worried about it, but I became interested in Newark, where my parents came from, and where the riots took place,” he said. “I was living in suburban New Jersey at the time that happened, and my girlfriend was working in downtown Newark. I was just interested in the whole Newark riot thing. I started thinking about those events and organized crime, and I just got interested in mixing those two elements.”

Chase told the publication that he’s extremely worried about Saints, aware that he’s playing with a series that fans feel very strongly about.

“Yeah, I feel they’re out there with shotguns, just waiting,” he said.