Sopranos Godfather Taking Whack at Hollywood

David Chase inks deal with HBO to launch new series about the birth and rise of entertainment industry

By Josh Grossberg Mar 16, 2009 6:56 PMTags
James Gandolfini, David ChaseTheo Wargo/Getty Images

Look who's muscling into the business.

David Chase, the Emmy-winning mastermind behind The Sopranos, is returning to HBO for the first time since his groundbreaking mob drama ended in 2007 to write and produce an epic miniseries about the birth of Hollywood.

No timetable has been set for its launch, but the project is titled A Ribbon of Dreams, after Orson Welles' description of the movies. It will chronicle the story of a mechanical engineer and a haunted cowboy who meet while toiling for D.W. Griffith in 1913 and decide to make movies together.

Their partnership spans the silent era through the introduction of the talkies and also includes the dawn of television and the rise of blockbuster dominance.

Along the way, they encounter such Hollywood icons as John Ford, John Wayne, Bette Davis and Billy Wilder, and dabble in a variety of genres, from silent westerns and screwball comedies to musicals and, presumably, gangster films.