The Sopranos left a gaping hole in the land of TV when it went off the air in 2007. But HBO has recently set out on a mission to make organized crime a part of our weekly TV schedule with Boardwalk Empire, which after only one episode has already been renewed for a second season.

However, Boardwalk Empire's 1920's Atlantic City isn't playing in the exact same mobster sandbox that The Sopranos did - but we may now have another crime series that will. Deadline exclusively reports that a TV series based on Martin Scorsese's now classic mob film Goodfellas is in the works and the writer of of the film is expected to return for the TV version.

Nicholas Pileggi will likely return to the crime-laden world of Goodfellas for at least the pilot, although I suspect he'll write more than that as time goes on considering how involved he was with the original film (he wrote the book on which the film was based, as well as co-writing the screenplay with Scorsese).

I doubt the show will follow the exact plot of the movie - after all, it'd be somewhat boring if the Goodfellas TV series was just a simple retelling of the Henry Hill story that was portrayed in Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece. But whatever the TV series entails, it already has the benefit of a built-in audience who hold the original film in such high esteem (some people, myself included, even consider it better than The Godfather).

As much as I'm looking forward to a TV version of Goodfellas (it's hard not to be excited), I'm curious to see how they differentiate it from The Sopranos. David Chase's critically-acclaimed saga of the life and times of Tony Soprano was basically Goodfellas in TV form, so I'm intrigued to see where they would go with this new series.

Will the Goodfellas TV series  just ride the coat-tails of The Sopranos' success or be a legitimate crime saga in its own right? Time will tell but I'll certainly be watching to find out.

Source: Deadline