Tony Soprano returns – but this time played by James Gandolfini’s son

It’s 13 years since The Sopranos ended, and many of us are still not over the shock. One minute Tony and his family were sitting in a diner, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ playing on the jukebox, and the next, pouf! The screen faded to black.

Was he assassinated? Did our TVs go on the blink? Was this meant to be a cliffhanger, dangling the prospect of a return to the series at some later date? Some fans were left feeling a bit meh by this very meta final scene, which played out exactly as the show's creator, David Chase, meant it to.

Any hope that Tony Soprano might return was dashed six years later, when the show's star, James Gandolfini, died suddenly, of a heart attack, aged 51.

For Michael Gandolfini, taking on the role made famous by his dad was particularly poignant. His father died while the pair were on a father-and-son trip to Sicily in 2013

Now, more than 20 years after The Sopranos first aired, changing TV forever, Tony Soprano is indeed back, in the long-awaited prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark. But there's no CGI involved here: the young Tony is played by Gandolfini's son, Michael Gandolfini, and Warner Bros has released a teaser clip that confirms his uncanny resemblance to his father.

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Blink and you’ll miss it, though: the clip is part of a Warner Bros sizzle reel highlighting some of the films to be released simultaneously in cinemas and on the streaming service HBO Max in 2021, including Dune, Godzilla vs Kong and The Suicide Squad. The nanosecond-long clip from The Many Saints of Newark shows Tony jnr roughing up some other guy on the street, but it’s enough to whet the appetites of fans who have been waiting since 2007 for a sighting of American TV’s most wanted.

"It's a profound honour to continue my dad's legacy while stepping into the shoes of a young Tony Soprano," Gandolfini said when his casting was first announced. The film also stars Ray Liotta, Vera Farmiga and the Hamilton star Leslie Odom jnr. It was due to be released in September 2020, but the date has been pushed back to this autumn: September 2021 in the United States, and October 22nd in Ireland.

For Michael Gandolfini, taking on the role made famous by his dad was particularly poignant. His father died while the pair were on a father-and-son trip to Sicily in 2013, where James was due to pick up an award. The then-teenager found his dad collapsed in the bathroom of their hotel, but medics called to the scene were unable to save the actor’s life.

Once The Sopranos had reached its conclusion, Chase was reluctant to revisit the Sopranos universe, but he found a way back into Tony’s life via Newark, New Jersey. “I used to go 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 film, set in the titular city in 1967, focuses on the riots that rocked it at the time, and the tensions between Newark’s Italian-American and African-American communities.

Don’t get your hopes up that The Many Saints of Newark will somehow fill that big, empty Sopranos-shaped hole in our TV schedules. It’s only a movie – the very genre that the series it’s based on was an early death knell for. Over the past decade, viewers have migrated to far more satisfying and bingeable TV series.

But here’s a chink of light: Michael Gandolfini is only 21, so he has a lifetime ahead to explore the character. We can see him at 50, looking even more like the Tony we remember, continuing his dad’s legacy and taking up the story where it left off in 2007. If The Many Saints of Newark effectively became a pilot for a future series, that would make it an even more intriguing prospect.