Steven Van Zandt performing with Bruce Springsteen at the 2012 Jazz Fest

Steven Van Zandt Reportedly Writing New Jersey TV Scripts

Mobsters Daily

Representative photograph: Steven Van Zandt performing with Bruce Springsteen at the 2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Photograph by Takahiro Kyono via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0. This image is not from the reported screenplay discussion.

Updated September 7, 2026: Steven Van Zandt is reportedly focusing on television screenplays that could use New Jersey as a production location. The report adds a meaningful Garden State detail to what the Sopranos actor and E Street Band guitarist has already disclosed: he has multiple TV projects written, including a mob-and-rock drama he would like Johnny Depp to join.

There is still no announced title for the New Jersey-set work, no network or streaming home, no production order and no confirmed cast. Most importantly for The Sopranos audience, nothing in the report connects the scripts to an HBO revival, sequel or spinoff.

What to know

  • The report: Page Six said on September 7 that Van Zandt was overheard discussing a greater focus on TV writing, with New Jersey as a possible place to film.
  • What is confirmed: The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music confirms that Van Zandt appeared at its Long Branch venue on September 1 for a sold-out The Making of Sun City screening and conversation.
  • What is not confirmed: Van Zandt, a studio and a distributor have not announced a project title, cast, buyer, shooting schedule or connection to The Sopranos.

What the new Steven Van Zandt report actually says

Page Six reported that Van Zandt spoke backstage with Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard and Jon Crowley, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. An unnamed observer told the outlet that the conversation concerned Van Zandt concentrating more on television scripts and the possibility of producing them in New Jersey.

That is a potentially significant conversation, but its evidentiary limits matter. The screenplay detail comes from an anonymous attendee’s account, not an on-record announcement by Van Zandt. Being overheard discussing possible production locations also does not establish financing, a buyer or a green light.

The setting itself is independently verifiable. The Bruce Springsteen Center’s official event page lists the September 1 screening at Powell Soundstage in Long Branch, New Jersey, followed by a conversation with Van Zandt and executive director Bob Santelli. The program concerned The Making of Sun City, Van Zandt’s documentary about the Artists United Against Apartheid campaign—not a television-project launch.

That distinction prevents a promising development from becoming a false announcement. Van Zandt reportedly discussed scripts. The Center hosted the event. No participating organization has publicly unveiled a series.

The report builds on six TV projects already written

The idea that Van Zandt is writing for television is not new or speculative. In an interview reported in August, he said he had written six television projects. His favorite was a proposed dramedy called Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive, built around three brothers whose lives divide among organized crime, rock music and the FBI.

Van Zandt said he wanted Johnny Depp for the FBI brother and had a soundtrack ready. That earlier disclosure inspired this article’s original version, which correctly treated Depp as a preferred choice rather than a cast member. There is still no public evidence that Depp has signed on or that negotiations are underway.

The new New Jersey report may concern Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive, another of the six scripts or several projects. Page Six did not identify a title. Treating the two reports as the same production would therefore go beyond the available facts.

What can be said is that the pieces fit Van Zandt’s creative history. He built Silvio Dante into one of the essential personalities behind The Sopranos’ enduring greatness, then moved from supporting player to creator, writer and star on Lilyhammer. His work repeatedly crosses music, criminal organizations, loyalty and men whose theatrical self-image is part of their power.

Why New Jersey would be more than a backdrop

For Van Zandt, a New Jersey setting carries both practical and dramatic weight. His public identity is inseparable from the state’s music culture through the E Street Band, while The Sopranos made North Jersey’s highways, strip malls, houses and clubs part of the show’s emotional grammar.

A conversation involving the state film commission’s executive director naturally suggests that location and production logistics were part of the subject. It does not prove an incentive agreement or official partnership. The accurate reading is narrower: according to the report, New Jersey is under discussion as a potential production home.

That could give a future series something Van Zandt’s best screen work understands instinctively. New Jersey is not simply “near New York.” It can represent proximity to power without full admission to it—a place where musicians, gangsters, commuters and families build their own hierarchies in the shadow of Manhattan.

The contrast is central to The Godfather and The Sopranos as two versions of America. The Corleones pursue grandeur and insulation; Tony Soprano’s world operates beside garden centers, restaurants and ordinary suburban routines. A Van Zandt project filmed in the state could use that friction without copying David Chase’s series.

This is not evidence of a Sopranos revival

Van Zandt’s association with Silvio guarantees that any mention of New Jersey television will trigger reunion talk. The available reporting does not support it. Page Six did not mention David Chase, HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery, Tony Soprano or any returning character.

Silvio’s fate also remains unresolved onscreen: he is critically wounded and comatose when the series ends. That ambiguity gives fans room to imagine stories, but it is not an active development. A creator writing in the same state where he played a famous mobster does not make the new work part of the same fictional universe.

The more grounded comparison is creative. Silvio’s controlled exterior helped define the crew dynamic, while Christopher Moltisanti’s frustrated screen ambitions reveal how dangerous storytelling becomes inside the mob. Our analysis of why Christopher killed screenwriter JT Dolan shows the darkest version of that collision between authorship and criminal power.

Van Zandt approaches it from the other side: a musician and actor who has actually turned experience into scripts. If a new project advances, its value will come from what he creates now, not from pretending Silvio has quietly left his hospital bed.

Where Johnny Depp fits—and what happens next

Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive remains the only named Van Zandt television pitch in the public record described here. Its gangster, musician and FBI brothers offer a clear way to unite his established interests, and Depp remains the creator’s stated choice for one role. None of those elements has been confirmed for the newly reported New Jersey conversations.

The next meaningful proof would be an on-record statement from Van Zandt, followed by a named production company, studio, network or streaming service. A formal development deal would still not guarantee filming; a series order or start-of-production announcement would move the story onto firmer ground.

Until then, the careful conclusion is also the interesting one. Steven Van Zandt reportedly wants to write more television in and about New Jersey, and his earlier comments show that the work is more substantial than a passing idea: six projects exist on paper. What the Garden State conversation may provide is a possible home for those scripts.

That is news worth watching without turning it into a premiere that has not happened. Van Zandt has the stories, the setting and decades of credibility in mob television. What he does not yet have—at least publicly—is the deal that puts a camera in front of them.

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