David Chase

David Chase [he/him] has produced, written, and directed critically acclaimed television shows, including the influential, Peabody Award-winning HBO drama series, The Sopranos.

The Sopranos is the most financially successful series in the history of cable television and is acknowledged as one of the greatest television series of all time. Chase’s directorial feature film debut, Not Fade Away, was selected as the centerpiece of the 50th New York Film Festival in 2012. The film was a music-driven coming of age story set in suburbia in the ’60s and was released by Paramount Pictures.

Chase was born in Mt. Vernon, New York and raised in New Jersey. He studied at New York University and received a graduate degree in film from Stanford University.

Chase began writing for network television and eventually became a writer and producer on the classic NBC show The Rockford Files. In 1978, he won his first Emmy when the show was named Outstanding Dramatic Series. In 1980, Chase earned his second Emmy, for Outstanding Writing in a Movie for Television for the acclaimed Off the Minnesota Strip. He also received the Writers Guild of America Award for that film. Chase first directed a self-penned episode of the ’80s incarnation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He garnered further Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series with Northern Exposure and the civil rights drama I’ll Fly Away.

Inspired by William Wellman’s The Public Enemy and his early years in New Jersey, Chase created and developed The Sopranos, which premiered January 10, 1999, and is recognized as a phenomenon in global television and popular culture, winning a multitude of awards, 21 Emmys and five Golden Globes among them.

The Many Saints of Newark, Chase’s highly anticipated film prequel to The Sopranos, was released by Warner Bros. in October 2021. In 2023, he was inducted into The New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Chase was the subject of Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023 in honor of The Sopranos 25th Anniversary. The documentary was released on MAX in September 2024.