By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The much-anticipated final season of "The Sopranos" will strike a theme of money and materialism, which for the characters on the hit mob drama is "all they care about," according to creator David Chase.
Chase insisted at a New York appearance on Tuesday that the sixth season, now in production, will be the last but still left open the tantalizing possibility that fans won\'t have to say goodbye to the fictional mob family just yet.
"I really enjoy it, so why leave something like that?" he told a forum sponsored by The New Yorker magazine and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. "It\'s just a question of whether the story works out creatively in six seasons, which I think it will. Then we probably shouldn\'t do a seventh."
Pressed repeatedly on the question of a seventh season, he said, "No. No more," but then conceded the plot line would not have to change drastically for added shows.
"It is possible," he said.
It has long been rumored that the show may climax with a feature film, something producers have remained silent on.
Naturally tight-lipped about who might get "whacked" in the upcoming season, Chase simply said: "Somebody, I guess."
"We do have that machine that sprays blood on the wall," he explained.
The show\'s creator, writer and executive producer said he has known for two or three years how the violent yet funny series will end. The Emmy-award show made its debut in 1999.
"I started thinking about what are these people really about, what are they really after," he said. "It\'s going to be about money and about materialism, buying stuff, consumerism.
"That\'s all they care about," he said. "All that stuff helps them not to think about larger issues. I notice that myself. When I go shopping, I feel better. It\'s like a high."
The final season of "The Sopranos" is not expected on HBO until spring 2006, nearly two years after the last season ended on the Time Warner Inc.-owned cable channel.
Meanwhile, as the show\'s actors work to replace its profanity-laced lines for future reruns on network television, Chase said he has little problem with HBO making money reselling the hit series.
But he said: "It\'s going to be very painful for me to see the show transformed like that. I probably won\'t even look at it."
In his own future, Chase said he would like to try full-length films and make a comedy or a psychological thriller.
Looking back, he said he was relieved that four broadcast television networks originally turned down the opportunity to make "The Sopranos."
"It would have been a plane crash of differing expectations," he said. "We would have had a terrible time."
Network television, particularly hour-long drama shows, "gives such a false picture of life," he said.
"So much of it is a glorification of authority and an attempt to convince the American people that life isn\'t tragic, that everything works out and all those cops and all those firemen and all those judges and all those doctors, they really care," he said.
His favorite "Soprano" is its burly, hot-tempered mob boss Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini. "He\'s so earnest," Chase said. "I guess that\'s what I like about him. When he\'s upset, he really gets upset about something."