DEADLINE: This prequel was an easier sell, but because WarnerMedia put its entire 2021 slate as day-and-date on HBO Max, you are back on HBO. How did that feel?
CHASE: I don’t think, frankly that I would’ve taken the job if I knew it was going to be a day-and-date release. I think it’s awful.
DEADLINE: It is kind of ironic that here you make a theatrical film based on the iconic HBO series, and it’s coming out day-and-date on something with HBO in the title. What did you feel when that edict came down?
CHASE: Extremely angry, and I still am. I mean, I don’t know how much you go into this, you know, like…okay. If I was…one of those guys, if one of those executives was sitting here and I was to start pissing and moaning about it, they’d say, you know, there’s 17 other movies that have the same problem. What could we do? Covid! Well, I know, but those 16 other movies didn’t start out as a television show. They don’t have to shed that television image before you get people to the theater. But we do. And that’s where we’re at. People should go see it in a theater. It was designed to be a movie. It was…it’s beautiful as a movie. I never thought that it would be back on HBO. Never.
DEADLINE: You really could have walked away from this?
CHASE: Yeah…I mean, well, I say that…okay. I could’ve walked away, yes, but there was a part of that story where my partner Lawrence was saying come on, let’s get to work. Let’s do something, do something, do something. It’ll be good for you. Now, do you walk away from that? I don’t know.
DEADLINE: It was good for you to be pushed back into the ring, wasn’t it?
CHASE: …Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. And fortunately, I can stand by the movie. If we had not made a good movie, I don’t know what I’d say.
DEADLINE: Your frustration is understandable even with the knowledge that back in the day, The Sopranos was a long-running zeitgeist series on HBO, the template for the auteur TV series. And given the uncertainty about movie theaters and Covid, that crowd of HBO subscribers will be eager to see the series prequel, even if it is on an iPhone. A straight theatrical release for anything other than superheroes and spectacle could have left The Many Saints of Newark up against it.
CHASE: It’s bad. It’s bad, you know, and I’m told all the time, the business is changing, and you’re too sentimental about the movie theater, and all this stuff.
DEADLINE: What do you think about the way the business is changing?
CHASE: The business is changing, there’s no doubt about it. Me, I personally wish we were back in movie theaters, and I wish that movie theaters had really great architecture and interior design. I wish we were back there, but we’re not. So, in terms of the art of film, I suppose there will always be people who are extremely creative and brilliant. But the actual technical delivery system, even if you have a really great system at home, it’s not being in a movie theater with other people, in the dark, where their reaction kind of stirs your reaction, and yours stirs theirs, and it’s just not that. And it’s just too bad, and I guess the only thing we’ll have room for now is movies about, not about people, but about, you know, superheroes and f*cksticks. I don’t know.
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