Tag: The Many Saints of Newark

Warner Brothers Just Changed the Game. Will Release Every New Movie On HBO Max in 2021

By on • ( Leave a comment )

Holy smokes. Even with the film industry cratering due to the pandemic, I never thought I’d see the day a major movie studio would bite the bullet and start releasing blockbuster movies straight to streaming. It’s like the legal version everyone my age dreamed of after growing up pirating movies off Napster and Kazaa. Allegedly.

It all starts with Wonder Woman 1984 being released in theaters and on HBO Max at the same exact time on Christmas Day. I cannot overstate how MONUMENTAL of a shift that is in the movie industry. Who knows if this will last beyond 2021, but this is an awesome test because we’ve all seen media move towards streaming more and more the last few years. Sure, there are some movies that you really would prefer to see on the big screen, but with 50 inch 4K TVs selling for like $250 these days, it has become less important. And not to go completely dark on everyone, but with Covid and more and more mass shootings popping up, it’s completely understandable if you’d rather watch a movie from your couch. Especially with movie tickets going for like $20 a pop at this point.

How this all works financially I’m not exactly sure yet. I know the studios held out for as long as they realistically could as they pushed the premiere dates of movies like Wonder Woman, which would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in normal times. As Papa Giorgio pointed out, WB actually owns HBO Max so they’re essentially using this as an incentive to bring in new subscribers. I guarantee you they get more subscribers than they would have before when the biggest benefit to having HBO Max was being able to watch Fresh Prince re-runs and the upcoming Justice League Directors Cut. Both things I will watch, but not something the typical consumer is throwing their credit card at you for.

Now we’ll be able to watch Dune, Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad, The Matrix 4, Space Jam and all kinds of stuff right from home. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert, but that sounds amazing to me.

It is a risky strategy because all of these movies will come “at no extra cost” (until they raise the price like Netflix does twice a year). So I don’t know if they just got past a point where it’s more economical to just stream it and try to recoup some money through subscriptions rather than hold out hope, push release dates even further, and possibly lose incredibly valuable buzz. I mean Papa Giorgio and I joke all the time how we would’ve paid like $75 bucks just to watch Tenet on streaming because we weren’t about to go to a theater. But for now this is an incredible shift in the typical way of doing business.

It remains to be seen if any other major studios follow suit, but I wouldn’t recommend investing in movie theater chains any time soon.

James Gandolfini’s Son Tapped to Play a Young Tony in “The Sopranos” Prequel

By on • ( Leave a comment )

Deadline – The Sopranos creator David Chase has found his Tony Soprano. Michael Gandolfini has been set to play the future New Jersey organized crime family boss in The Many Saints of Newark, the feature prequel to Chase’s groundbreaking TV series The Sopranos that Alan Taylor is directing for New Line.

If you read my blog on The Sopranos 20th Anniversary a week or two ago or in general follow entertainment even passingly,  then you know a prequel movie is being made surrounding the world of the masterpiece HBO series. Basically, it will give us a glimpse into the yesteryear of the criminal world Tony Soprano lived in, the past that he resentfully regaled his guys of, craving for how things used to be. Or at least used to seem, to him.

The two key characters will be Dicky Moltisanti, Christopher’s late father and one of Tony’s idols, as well as Tony’s own Dad and hero, Johnny “Boy” Soprano. On the 20th anniversary, David Chase, the creator, revealed as a sort of gift to the fans and tribute to the since passed Gandolfini, that a young Tony Soprano would also be featured. They had even seemed to of already picked an actor to play him, although I can no longer find the kid’s name via a quick Google search.

That is because, as of yesterday, James Gandolfini’s own son, Michael, has been tapped to play the younger version of his Dad’s monumental role. I can’t imagine what it must feel like not just for Michael and the Gandolfini family, but also the cast of Sopranos, who never miss an opportunity to mention how much they miss their old friend, that the role is being assumed by the son of the man himself. They are keeping it in the family, as Tony himself would have wanted. Poetic justice indeed.

If I’m doing my math right, Michael would be about 20 now, having been on an 8th grade trip with his father when the elder Gandolfini suddenly died from a heart attack in 2013. This makes him a bit old for the role as I think the time period they were shooting for would have implied a pre-pubescent to teenage Tony. That said I just got done binging a Netflix show where actors and actresses as old as 26 were playing high school kids and I don’t think anyone really cares anymore.

To answer the other lingering question, yes Michael Gandolfini is an actor with actual credits to his name. He has a reoccurring role on “The Deuce”, the excellent David Simon/James Franco show about the early days of porn I’ve failed to keep up with. So the chops are there. He is the spitting image of his Dad. Add Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga, among others, to the list and we have ourselves a stud cast for this thing.

Fuhgettaboutit.

-Joey B

P.S – I didn’t say “fuck” once in this blog. 2019 is about growth kids.