Goodfellas TV show to focus on the early years, when it was "funny"—you know, the way it tells the story and everything

By Sean O'Neal | October 27, 2010 | 5:43pm

Aux Features TV

Weeks after the fact, the speculation about a Goodfellas TV series continues to sit in our stomachs like a brick of baked ziti (this stuff is like lead, ba-boom). Nevertheless, author Nicholas Pileggi is back to fuck us in the other ear with even more updates on the Warner Bros.-backed project, telling Culture Magazine (via Digital Spy) that the show will not pick up after the events of the film—difficult to do, seeing as “we murdered everybody… There’s nobody left”—but rather serve as “sort of a prequel” by returning Henry Hill et al. to “the early years.” Pileggi explains: “The part of the movie people often like best is the opening third, where all the funny stuff is happening, and there’s so much we could fit in.”

That means it will be set in a time when Henry Hill is, if anything, just another number-running kid fetching sandwiches, peddling cigarettes, and having mailmen stuffed into pizza ovens, long before he became Frankie Valli or some kind of big shot. And while the idea of a Goodfellas that focuses on “the funny stuff,” that is a clown here to fucking amuse you is a tiny bit worrisome, you may be reassured (?) to know that director Martin Scorsese is on board, and Pileggi himself is handling the pilot script, so it’s not like a bunch of hobos staggering out of here. But we guess it doesn’t matter. As soon as the movie’s made through the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it to the network at a discount. You take a highly esteemed film and you sell it as a TV series. It doesn’t matter. It’s all profit.