Just months after playing a 1970s backdrop to DC Comics characters in the Joker movie, Newark appears to be the destination for yet another major motion film. Word is brewing that filmmakers are bringing production for the prequel to the HBO series The Sopranos to Newark, New Jersey in May. The filming will reportedly take place on Branford Place, near Teachers Village housing and schools, and Hobby’s Delicatessen.
The motion picture titled The Many Saints of Newark, also simply known as Newark, is set during the 1960s riots in Newark when there were intense feuds between African Americans and Italian Americans in the city. The Sopranos series creator David Chase is co-producing and writing with Lawrence Konner so the same intensity of the HBO series is expected in this Warner Bros. production, which is set to release in September 2020.
It’s no fluke that major film houses are choosing Newark as a backdrop. In 2018, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy restored the New Jersey Film and TV Tax Credit, approving a program that credits production companies $75 million per fiscal year for film and television projects. Since the reinstatement of the Film and TV Tax Credit, shows like NBC’s The Enemy Within and the return of MTV’s Jersey Shore have filmed in Newark.
David Schoner Jr., associate director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and TV Commission told Destination Newark “There are a lot more productions coming in but we just can’t talk about them yet.”
So stay tuned for Newark, which could just become the new Hollywood.
