A prequel for the Sopranos has been rumored since the series went off the air in 2007, and seven years later, creator David Chase says it’s still a possibility.

'Sopranos' Prequel

Chase, though he cautioned that a Sopranos prequel would look a lot different than the original hit HBO series, he's not ready to say definitively that it won't ever come to be in some form or another. “Even if I did it, it wouldn’t be The Sopranos that was on the air—obviously at least one person is gone that we would need,” Chase said, according to the AV Club. “There are a couple of eras that would be interesting for me to talk about, about Newark, New Jersey."

Chase added, "One would be late ’60s, early ’70s, about all the racial animosity, or the beginning, the really true beginning of the flood of drugs.”

In 2012, HBO was apparently interested in a prequel that "would be with Tony’s father, and Uncle Junior, and Livia—Tony’s mother long before any of the other characters we know now," according to the show's creator.

The possibility came up again back in the spring of this year, when Chase admitted he did "flirt with the idea" of going forward with a prequel, going on to reveal that the idea of capturing more New Jersey neighborhoods at different points in history “kind of interests me but not enough that I would have done it."

Chase also made headlines earlier this year after a published interview with him mplied that he had finally revealed Tony Soprano's fate. When Vox writer Martha P. Nochimson asked about whether or not he was dead Sopranos' finale scene, Chase first replied, "Why are we talking about this?" After Nochimson said it was mere curiosity, he shook his head “no,” adding, “No, he isn’t.”

After "Tony Lives" articles went viral on the Internet, Chase denied the confirmation through a rep, and then again in his own words. "I don’t recall that conversation. I’m sure it happened, but I don’t recall it, and if I did say that, I believe I was probably thinking about something else," Chase told the Daily Beast.

When pressed about the importance of Tony's survival or demise, Chase answered, "The question is, to be really pretentious, what is time? How do we spend our really brief sojourn here? How do we behave, and what do we do?" Chase explained, "And the recognition that it’s over all too soon, and it very seldom happens the way we think. I think death very seldom comes to people the way they think it’s going to. And the spiritual question would be: “Is that all there is?”