Cast & crew of HBO’s iconic crime drama THE SOPRANOS have been having a celebration of sorts. The series that helped propel the pay-cabler into an entertainment giant has been celebrating its 20TH anniversary as of late. As of this writing, there is a The Sopranos Film Festival going on complete will the airing of some episodes. Also, the series has been having a marathon on the cable channel HBO2 and, of course, you can seek out the entire series, season by season, on either of HBO’s streaming sites. Right now, they also feature a Collection called “The Soprano Fan Favorites” featuring ten of the most memorable episodes.
One of our go-to sources, Deadline, has a great oral history going on about the show also. One site writer, and THE SOPRANOS fan, Mike Fleming Jr. interviews just about everyone from the series. Read Part I and Part II and look for Part III coming soon. But, the most exciting news is about the upcoming prequel feature film called THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK. We have mentioned it before and it has been a long wait, but creator David Chase has opened up at this time to elaborate. We are reminded that Alessandro Nivola will play Dickie Moltisanti. He was the father of Tony Soprano’s future protégé Christopher and a mob soldier who died in the ’70s at the hands of a crooked cop whom Christopher (Michael Imperioli) would later murder on the day of his retirement from the police force. That character will provide an entry point into a look at the mob’s origins in the turbulence of racial tensions between African Americans and Italian Americans in Newark, NJ at that time.
David Chase has said that “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. “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. I started thinking about those events and organized crime, and I just got interested in mixing those two elements. 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.”
At this time, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of THE SOPRANOS and look forward to the movie. How about you?
