Even though it will be seven years this month since the series finale of The Sopranos aired on HBO, creator David Chase still refuses to go into details about Tony’s fate.
According to a report from Forbes , when the Sopranos finale originally aired on June 10, 2007, Chase was on his way to France and refused to answer any questions about it. Before he left, he told his writers and producers to not talk about it, either.
In the final Sopranos episode, titled “Made in America,” the screen cut to black after showing Tony (James Gandolfini) meeting with his family at a diner. This left many fans questioning whether he died or lived on after the series ended.
During a recent screening of the first and last episodes of The Sopranos , the only two Chase directed, the creator said he wasn’t “trying to be coy” about whether or not Tony survived.
“It’s not the point if he’s alive or dead,” Chase told the audience at the Museum of Moving Images in Queens, New York.
The Sopranos creator continued and said “the whole series is about death.”
“All I’m able to say is gobbledygook,” he added. “I wanted to create a suspenseful sequence. I meant to make you feel, not think.”
Chase also praised the late Gandolfini and said he doesn’t know how the actor was able to play a character like Tony Soprano.
“He had a whole sweet side, he also had a lot of rage,” Chase said. “On the set, he was boiling over all the time. He could tap right into it.”
The Sopranos creator added that Gandolfini was a really determined person, working “five days a week” and “until midnight.”
“He wasn’t a patsy, he had a lot of questions about everything,” Chase said.
During the Q&A, Chase also admitted that a prequel to The Sopranos is an idea with which he “still frankly flirt(s).” He added that it could happen “if I had a really great way to do it.”
In a previous report from The Inquisitr , during press for Not Fade Away , Chase admitted that he didn’t watch the final episode of The Sopranos until 2010. He thought the episode would be “kind of a dud,” but he ended up being “proud of it.”
“I was satisfied that we’d done something,” the Sopranos creator said.
However, he was confused that the way The Sopranos ended became the topic of discussion, and he felt all of the talk about it “completely obliterate(d) the rest of the episode that came before it.”
“No one ever even saw it, talked about it, mentioned it or anything about it — and I think didn’t even interpret it correctly because all they talked about was that ending,” Chase added. “I did not know that would happen.”
In related news, The Sopranos will be making its way to Blu-ray for the first time ever this November. According to The Hollywood Reporter , all 86 episodes of the series will be available on November 4 in a 28-disc, collectible boxed set.
This collector’s set of The Sopranos will also have a digital copy of every episode and more than five hours of bonus features. Some of the features include deleted scenes, two roundtable discussions with the cast and crew, and a featurette that explores how The Sopranos changed the way television is today.
[Images via iCollector.com and StyleCaster ]