On January 10, 2024, many fans of The Sopranos took to social media and other mediums to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the legendary HBO drama. While many were happy to take trips down memory lane, the show’s creator saw it as a “funeral” rather than a celebration. From his vantage point, sophisticated television is “dying.”
“It is a funeral,” Chase told The Times.
“Something is dying.”
When Chase brought The Sopranos to premium cable in 1999, he says “the networks were in an artistic pit.” However, the success of his show and others that followed made networks “regret all their decades of stupidity and greed.”
“Back then the networks were in an artistic pit. A sh*thole,” Chase continued.
“The process was repulsive. In meetings, these people would always ask to take out the one thing that made an episode worth doing. I should have quit.”
More recently, he said he was developing a project about a high-end escort, but was told to make like Lupe Fiasco and “dumb it down.”
“We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus,” Chase explained.
“And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”
