'Sopranos' Prequel Movie 'The Many Saints Of Newark' Will Now Open In September

The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark has a new release date, again. The movie, which takes place during Tony Soprano's younger days in 1960s and 1970s in Newark, New Jersey, was originally slated to arrive in theaters in 2020. Of course, the coronavirus got in the way, and the release was pushed to March 2021. Now, Warner Bros. has gone ahead and pushed the movie again – this time to September, where it will open in theaters and hit HBO Max on the same day.

At the start of 2020, when we were all so young and naive, /Film put out a list of our "Most Anticipated Movies of 2020." Then the COVID-19 pandemic came to town and made almost everything on that list obsolete. But one of my picks for the list was The Many Saints of Newark, a movie prequel to the game-changing HBO series The Sopranos. If 2020 had been a normal year, The Many Saints of Newark would've opened on September 25, 2020. But the pandemic caused the film to be delayed to March 12, 2021.

But now, March 2021 is fast approaching and Warner Bros. has delayed the film yet again – to September 24. The studio's Twitter account revealed the news, stating: "On September 24, watch as rival gangsters rise up during the explosive era of the Newark riots – The Many Saints of Newark, a feature film prequel to the award-winning The Sopranos. In theaters and streaming exclusively on HBO Max."

It's safe to assume that Warners is delaying the film because they're hoping by September the coronavirus might be more under control, thus inspiring more people to actually go out to a movie theater to see this thing. But in the event that that doesn't happen, the HBO Max release will still be in play. Like all Warner Bros. 2021 films, it'll be on HBO Max for 31 days at no extra cost.

Directed by Alan Taylor and written by Sopranos creator David Chase and Lawrence Konner, The Many Saints of Newark is "set in the explosive 1960s in the era of the Newark riots, when the African-American and Italian communities are often at each other's throats. But among the gangsters within each group, the dangerous rivalry becomes especially lethal."

Alessandro Nivola stars as Dickie Moltisanti, father of Sopranos character Christopher Moltisanti. The rest of the cast includes Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Michela De Rossi, Ray Liotta, Vera Farmiga, and Michael Gandolfini. Gandolfini is the son of late Sopranos star James Gandolfini, and, fittingly enough, he's playing the younger version of Tony Soprano.