'Goodfellas' And 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' Writers Developing Showtime Drama About The Mafia

More than a decade after HBO's acclaimed mob drama The Sopranos went off the air, Showtime is developing an hour-long drama series of its own about the mafia – and this new show comes from a former Sopranos writer.

Terence Winter, who won four Emmys for his work writing The Sopranos, is writing a series based on the history of organized crime in America, and he's teaming up with mega-producer Brian Grazer and Goodfellas and Casino writer Nicholas Pileggi to bring it to the small screen.

Deadline has the news about the untitled Showtime mafia series. The show is reportedly "inspired by Pileggi's in-depth chronology of organized crime in America — which is also the history of corruption in America — as seen through the eyes of the mafia's First Family."

Pileggi started out as a journalist before writing Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family and Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, books which Martin Scorsese adapted into acclaimed gangster dramas Goodfellas and Casino. Pileggi co-wrote the screenplays for those movies, and recently re-teamed with Scorsese to executive produce The Irishman. He's spent his entire professional life immersed in crime and the world of the mob, moving from non-fiction writing to writing the mob drama Vendetta, creating the show Vegas, and executive producing Ridley Scott's American Gangster. It's safe to say he knows a thing or two about corruption and organized crime.

Terence Winter is writing the new series. He started out writing for shows like Flipper and Disney's Sister, Sister before taking a sharp turn away from family-friendly content and making a name for himself as a writer/producer on The Sopranos. He later created HBO shows like Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl, and was the sole credited writer of Martin Scorsese's 2013 stockbroker crime film The Wolf of Wall Street.

Grazer is one of the biggest producers in Hollywood, and is one half of the powerhouse team behind the prolific production company Imagine Entertainment. (His producing partner is Ron Howard.) He's tackled several stories that have intersected with organized crime over the course of his 40-plus year career.

While their pedigrees are impressive, part of me (foolishly? We'll see) wonders if there's anything new to say about the mafia in America. This is a story that's been told and re-told again and again from multiple angles in our popular culture, so I'm just hoping this show is able to add to the topic in a significant way.