NEWARK, N.J. - "Sopranos" fans who thought the series' open-ended conclusion was a setup for a movie may be in for disappointment: creator David Chase says it isn't so.
Chase went to France before the airing of the much-debated finale of the HBO series because he wanted to avoid what he called "all the Monday morning quarterbacking." But like a true New Jersey loyalist, he granted one interview to The Star-Ledger of Newark, which posted his comment early Tuesday on its Web site.
"I don't think about (a movie) much," he told the paper. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, `Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.
"I'm not being coy," he added. "If something appeared that really made a good `Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."
Chase said he would leave it to fans to interpret the show's last scene for themselves. It featured the members of the Soprano family arriving for dinner as Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" plays. Others in the restaurant include a man in a Member's Only jacket who goes to the bathroom, which some fans have interpreted as a nod to the scene in "The Godfather" in which Michael Corleone retrieves a gun from the bathroom before a shooting.
As the music and tension build, the screen suddenly goes silent and dark.
"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," said Chase, 61, who grew up in North Caldwell.
"People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them, and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them," he said. "Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there."
Another problem with a movie is that so many characters died in the last season. Chase said he has considered "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems."
Chase also elaborated on how he decided to make the Journey classic the last music played on the series.
"It didn't take much time at all to pick it, but there was a lot of conversation after the fact. I did something I'd never done before: In the location van, with the crew, I was saying, `What do you think?' When I said, `Don't Stop Believin',' people went, `What? Oh my God!'
"I said, `I know, I know, just give a listen,' and little by little, people started coming around."
