It has finally been announced that Season 6 will bring the end to the Soprano family saga. This is from Netscape News.
'The Sopranos' nears final HBO run, for sure
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For anyone who thinks HBO's mob drama "The Sopranos" might return once more after its upcoming sixth-and-a-half seasons, series creator and executive producer David Chase has one word -- fuggedaboutit.
HBO announced last summer that the much-anticipated 12-part sixth season that launches in March of this year would be followed by eight "bonus" episodes that would air beginning in January 2007.
But neither the Time Warner Inc.-owned cable network nor producers had said decisively whether those episodes would be the last -- until now.
Speaking to television critics gathered in Pasadena on Friday, Chase and cast members said the Emmy-winning gangster series, a critical favorite that has become a marquee show for HBO, would indeed conclude with the upcoming batch of 20.
"There will be these 12 (upcoming episodes) and then another eight, and that will be the end, yeh," Chase said when pressed.
He also cast strong doubt on speculation about a feature movie version of the show, which stars James Gandolfini as the conflicted New Jersey mob boss and family man Tony Soprano.
"We used to talk about it, HBO and myself. We haven't talked about it in a long time. ... It's hard to see how it would work," Chase said. "I think what we're going to be doing the next year and a half would have been that movie."
The show wrapped up its fifth season in June of 2004 and has been on hiatus since then.
Chase and his cast revealed little about how the upcoming episodes would unfold, or how the series would end. But the creator said much of the action during the sixth season would be driven by fallout from an arrest and racketeering trial faced by the character Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni, a mob underboss played by Vince Curatola.
The season also will include guest appearances by veteran actor Hal Holbrook as a scientist who becomes involved with the mob and by British performer Ben Kingsley playing himself.
Asked whether the show would end with the characters' lives continuing through time or whether the Soprano saga would come to a definitive close, Chase said, "The truth is both."
Gandolfini suggested he has ready to move on to more likable roles when his TV mob days are over. "I'm too tired to be a tough guy or any of that stuff anymore. We pretty much used all that up in this show," he said.
The actor added he is working on plans to produce and star in a feature film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with pioneering war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn covered the Spanish Civil War with Hemingway during the 1930s and became his third wife.
Reuters/VNU
01/13/06
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