Prequel to #TheSopranos - The Many Saints of Newark - Hires Thor Director Alan Taylor

Alan Taylor of Thor: The Dark World and Terminator Genisys will be taking the helm of a feature film set prior to hit early 2000s TV crime drama series The Sopranos. Broadcast between 1999 and 2007, HBO’s The Sopranos won 21 Emmy Awards and five Golden Globes over the course of its impactful nine-year run.

James Gandolfini, who played conflicted crime family patriarch Tony Soprano, passed away in 2013, but The Sopranos creator David Chase and co-writer Lawrence Konner have found a way to continue the series’ legacy, through a prequel film directed by Thor: The Dark World’s Alan Taylor.

According to The Wrap, The Many Saints of Newark will be set in the 1960s in New Jersey, north-eastern US, during a time of extreme tension between Newark city’s Italian and African-American communities. Other than that, New Line Cinema is keeping tight-lipped about plot details, leaving fans to wonder which characters from the series will be found within the movie treatment.

Taylor’s own background was in TV, working his way through a slew of episodic dramas — Homicide: Life on the Street, The West Wing, Sex and the City, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and more.

In fact, he has previous experience with The Sopranos, having directed nine of its episodes, including one of its final episodes, the Emmy-winning season six Kennedy and Heidi.