It goes without saying that “The Sopranos” is one of the most beloved and acclaimed television series of all time. Nominated for 111 Primetime Emmy Awards across its eight-year run on HBO, the mafia drama picked up 21 trophies and won twice for Outstanding Drama Series (after being nominated in the top category for every season). Fourteen years after wrapping its 86-episode six-season run, “The Sopranos” remains as popular as ever, with the pandemic igniting a surge of quarantine “Sopranos” binging over the last year and change (visit GQ’s report here). All of this is to say that anticipation could not be higher for the upcoming “Sopranos” prequel movie “The Many Saints of Newark.”
Warner Bros. and New Line officially announced “The Many Saints of Newark” on March 8, 2019, with Warner Bros Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich saying in a statement, “[Creator] David Chase 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.”
Check out every detail “The Soprano” fans know about “The Many Saints of Newark” in the list below. IndieWire will update the list as more information about the movie is released.
Warner Bros. debuted the first official trailer for “The Many Saints of Newark” on June 29, along with a handful of first look images from the prequel (including the photo above). The trailer has Michael Gandolfini’s young Tony Soprano front and center and only teases how the supporting players will be involved with the character’s infusion into the mafia. One rumor confirmed by the trailer is Vera Farmiga playing Tony’s mother, Livia. It goes without saying that “Many Saints of Newark” will depict the origins of Tony and Livia’s volatile and troubled relationship.
The new official synopsis for the film from Warner Bros: reads: “Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark’s history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family’s hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities—and whose influence over his impressionable nephew will help make the teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we’ll later come to know: Tony Soprano.”
Warner Bros. has yet to release an official plot synopsis for “The Many Saints of Newark,” but series creator and the film’s co-writer David Chase confirms the story is set in 1967 against the backdrop of the Newark race riots. The relationship between Dickie Moltisanti and his nephew, Tony Soprano, plays out opposite the escalating racial tensions between the Italian-American and African-American communities in Newark, New Jersey. Tony Soprano appears as a teenager in the film (pictured in first look footage above), long before audiences met James Gandolfini’s adult interation of Tony in the HBO series. Dickie Moltisanti is the father of Christopher Moltisanti, played by Michael Imperioli in “The Sopranos.” Dickie never appeared as a character in the series but was often discussed as he was a mentor figure to Tony.
It wouldn’t be “The Sopranos” without series creator David Chase, who came up with the story and co-wrote the script for “The Many Saints of Newark.” Despite helming the feature “Not Fade Away” and directing both the pilot episode and the series finale of “The Sopranos,” Chase opted not to helm the prequel movie himself. Chase won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series twice with “The Sopranos,” and he picked up two Emmys for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series during his tenure with the show.
The creator told Deadline when Warner Bros. officially announced the project that he was “still very worried” about bringing the world of “The Sopranos” back, “but I became interested in Newark, where my parents came from, and where the riots took place. 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.”
On crafting the film’s story, Chase said, “I was interested in Newark and life in Newark at that time. 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 deal with the tensions between the Blacks and whites at the time, and Tony Soprano will be part of this, but as a kid.”
Alessandro Nivola stars as Dickie Moltisanti in “The Many Saints of Newark.” The actor has racked up an impressive list of supporting turns in films such as “Jurassic Park III,” “Junebug,” “American Hustle,” “Ginger & Rosa,” “A Most Violent Year,” “Selma,” “The Neon Demon,” “You Were Never Really Here,” and “Disobedience,” but “Many Saints” marks a rare opportunity for Nivola to step into the leading spotlight.
“David Chase wrote me the role of a lifetime,” Nivola told Rolling Stone about the prequel movie. “Far and away, filming this movie was the most exciting thing in my career so far. It’s an incredibly nuanced, violent, funny, charming, scary, morally confused person, and it was an absolute joy to play.”
Nivola continued, “What David did was to tell an origin story of Tony Soprano through a character that was dead before the series and that is such a surprising way of going about it. And the late ’60s mob movie is the stuff of dreams. Everyone was at the top of their game. The only infuriating thing is how long we have to wait.”
“The Many Saints of Newark” has garnered the most headlines for casting James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, in the role made iconic by his late father. Michael plays the young Tony Soprano. James was nominated for six Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series thanks to his performance as Tony, winning the award in consecutive years between 2000-2003
In an interview with Vanity Fair last year, Gandolfini described “The Many Saints of Newark” as “an origin story [of Tony Soprano] through the eyes of Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher’s father.” The actor added about the film, “The Tony Soprano we know has this beautiful vulnerability underneath and this rough exterior, but what if we flip that on its side and you watch a creative, hopeful, kind, curious kid get whittled down and formed into what he has to be?”
When Michael Gandolfini landed the part made famous by his father, he had faith it wasn’t just stunt casting given “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s direct involvement with the prequel film. As the actor concluded: “I had this unspoken trust that David [Chase] wasn’t going to cast me if there was even a shred that this isn’t going to work.”
Rounding out the cast of “The Many Saints of Newark” are Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Michael Gandolfini, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Michela De Rossi, Ray Liotta, and Vera Farmiga. Stoll is playing a younger version of Junior Soprano, while Magaro is appearing as Silvio Dante (played by Steven Van Zandt in the series) and Vera Farmiga is Tony Soprano’s mother Livia (Nancy Marchand in the series).
“I will say that for those of us who had to play characters who were already established, that was a huge weight on our shoulders,” Magaro recently told NME. “We know how much those characters mean to people. I think everyone who plays those characters really does a service, and I hope the fans don’t feel let down by that.”
Before auditioning for his father’s most famous role, Michael Gandolfini had never watched a single episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” because father James “didn’t want me to see Tony Soprano — the violence, the angry, the mean,” the young actor told Vanity Fair. “Of course I was on set and would visit him in his trailer, but I had never watched the show…I never knew Tony Soprano. I only knew my dad.”
Michael Gandolfini started watching “The Sopranos” for the first time to prep for his Tony Soprano audition. The actor said, “It was really hard to watch my dad. I recorded four hours of his monologues with [Dr.] Melfi and walked around New York with them constantly, constantly, constantly playing in my ear.”
John Magaro told Variety, “As this was approaching, I really wanted to be a part of it and I wasn’t sure what it was going to be. When I found out what I was going to go in and audition for it, it became even more scary because I know that person personally…I did my best to not do just an ‘SNL’ imitation, [but] to give it life and acknowledge that he’s about 20 years younger at that time.”
Magaro remembered Chase telling him over dinner that he was going to offer the role to Michael. “I said, ‘No way,’” Magaro recalls. “And he said he came in [and] auditioned, and it’s scary how similar not just their looks, but manners are. Also he’s a fantastic actor.”
“I work for the family,” Odom Jr. teased to NME about his “Many Saints” character’s connection to Tony Soprano and the notorious DiMeo crime outfit. “It’s about a pivotal summer in young Tony’s life, and we’re looking at the Newark riots… It is still, in a lot of ways, the story of the family that we love — the Sopranos.”
“I was a happy artist,” the Oscar nominee added about working on the movie. “I was very happy to talk about how the immigrant story rubbed up against the story of disenfranchised Black people at that time. It was quite literally incendiary. The city was on fire.”
Fans of “The Sopranos” banked on a veteran director of the series landing the filmmaking gig for “The Many Saints of Newark,” be it Tim Van Patten or Alan Taylor. Chase went with Taylor, who directed episodes of “The Sopranos” in every season except two of them. Taylor won the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for the sixth season episode “Kennedy and Heidi.” Overall, Taylor directed nine of the 86 episodes of “The Sopranos” and went on to earn more acclaim in the TV space by helming episodes of “Game of Thrones,” “Mad Men,” and “Boardwalk Empire.”
Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau is new to “The Sopranos” franchise, but his relationship with director Alan Taylor goes back to shooting “Game of Thrones” episodes such as “The North Remembers” and “The North Lands.” Morgenthau stuck with Taylor when the director made the jump to helming features, with “Thor: The Dark World” and “Terminator Genisys.” Morgenthau’s other cinematography credits include “Creed II” and the upcoming Jennifer Hudson-starring Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect.”
Lawrence Konner co-wrote “The Many Saints of Newark” with David Chase. The two worked together on “The Sopranos,” with Konner earning an Emmy nomination in 2001 for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series thanks to his work on the episode “Second Opinion.” Konner also earned Emmy nominations as an executive producer on “Boardwalk Empire” (Outstanding Drama Series in 2011) and “Roots” (Outstanding Limited Series” in 2016). Konner’s feature screenwriting credits include “Mona Lisa Smile,” Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes,” and “Mighty Joe Young.”
New to the “Sopranos” world is editor Christopher Tellefsen, an Oscar nominee for Best Film Editing thanks to his work on Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball.” Tellefsen’s other notable editing credits include “A Quiet Place,” “Joy,” “Capote,” and “Man on the Moon,” among other titles. The editor last cut together a period piece with “The Kitchen.”
Speaking to Cinemontage about editing a period piece, Tellefsen said, “I’d say to give it a sharpness and edge as much as I could. You have all of these challenges you have editing any kind of piece. As far as a consciousness toward time period, I think a lot of the choices come from the strength of the performances and the dynamic between the characters.”
Sticking with “The Sopranos” franchise is production designer Bob Shaw, who worked on 73 episodes of the original HBO series. Shaw continued to work with the premium cable network as the production designer on eight episodes of “Boardwalk Empire,” the crime drama executive produced by Martin Scorsese. Shaw would continue with the Oscar-winning director on his feature films, working as production designer on Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Irishman.” The latter title earned Shaw his first Oscar nomination for Best Production Design. Following “The Many Saints of Newark,” Shaw is now attached as a production designer on Julian Fellowes’ HBO series “The Gilded Age.”
Warner Bros. Pictures had originally scheduled “The Many Saints of Newark” to be released in theaters on September 25, 2020, but the plan was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The release was bumped back an entire year, first to September 24, 2021 and then to October 1, 2021. The film currently set to open October 1. “Many Saints” will adhere to Warner Bros.’ 2021 hybrid theatrical release model, in which all films open in theaters on the same day they become available to stream exclusively on HBO Max for 31 days.
Here’s the official poster for “The Many Saints of Newar,” featuring Michael Gandolfini as Tony Soprano and Alessandro Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti.
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Hope you enjoy the movie!
