Just read this on "The Daily Informant" web site:
David Chase, creator the critically-acclaimed, landmark TV drama, "The Sopranos" announced late Friday that he's signed a development deal with Viacom to create a "prequel" that centers on the preschool and elementary school years of central character Tony Soprano.
The new animated series to air in Nickelodeon's 'Nick Jr.' block has been tentatively titled, "Go Dago Go".
The series will begin during Tony Soprano's preschool years and will center on his early sociopathic tendencies to shake down his classmates for cookies and juice (literally building a foundation for his lifelong weight problems). Later in the series, the young Soprano character will graduate to bullying his classmates in Kindergarten and elementary school for lunch money and junk food and selling fake hall passes.
He'll also demonstrate his early tendencies towards violence, extortion, and intimidation when young Tony Soprano:
1) stabs in the knees with sharpened #2 pencils his first grade teacher for giving him a failing grade in math.
2) shoots the principal's car repeatedly with a fully-automatic paintball machine gun after reporting the young Soprano to the school psychiatrist.
3) blackmails the school nurse into giving him regular doses of the "leading subscription cold medicine" (with 90 percent alcohol) after getting compromising pictures of her with the gym teacher.
4) develops a profitable drug trade in controlled substances such as Ritalin, Strattera, and Adderall by intimidating his classmates into giving him their doses of the stimulant ADD medications.
The young Soprano will have some familiar buddies along with him. He manages to ignore the psycho babblings of big sister Janice (who's in the same school) and pals around with "little Silvio" and "little Paulie", and Vito, known back then as "Butt Baby". He also regularly ridicules his mentally-challenged fellow paisano "Phil Retardo", planting the seeds for a lifetime of tension between the two future mob bosses.
Don't miss little Jennifer Melfi as she starts her interest in psychiatry when she puts up her own "psychiatric help" stand on the playground to help her fellow students.
"Go Dago Go" promises to be a landmark series for Nick Jr. - television that will bridge the generational gap between adult fans of "The Sopranos" and the younger audiences of "Nick Jr.". It's bound to be "must see" family viewing.
Don't fail to miss "Go Dago Go" on ""Nick Jr", coming in 2008...or whenever David Chase feels damned good and ready.