Once upon a time in Naples
DQ travels to Naples to watch filming for Gomorra – Le Origini (Gomorrah – Origins), a 1970s-set prequel to the iconic Italian mafia drama. Director Marco D’Amore, writer Maddalena Ravagli, producer Riccardo Tozzi and Sky exec Nils Hartmann go back to the beginning.
Across five seasons, Italian mafia drama Gomorra – La serie (Gomorrah) transported audiences around the world to the port city of Naples, which serves as the backdrop for a story set among the Camorra clans.
Set in the 2010s, it introduces Ciro Di Marzio, a member of the Savastano clan of Secondigliano, which is headed by Pietro Savastano. When Pietro is arrested, a war for power breaks out between the clan’s old guard and new members – the latter headed by Pietro’s son Gennaro. The series then follows Ciro and Gennaro as they navigate alliances and feuds in the Neapolitan underworld.
Created by Roberto Saviano and based on his book of the same name, the Sky series stars Marco D’Amore as Ciro, Fortunato Cerlino as Pietro and Salvatore Esposito as Gennaro. Now, D’Amore is back in the world of Gomorrah, only this time he is behind the camera to tell the story of the young Pietro and his ascent to criminality in 1970s Naples.
The prequel, titled Gomorra – Le Origini (Gomorrah – Origins), takes place between 1976 and 1977 and finds Pietro as a tough city kid who grew up in the poorest parts of Naples suburb Secondigliano. He and his friends survive any way they can, riding their mopeds around town and committing petty theft. But he has a big dream: to become like Angelo ‘A Sirena, the neighbourhood “king.” When he manages to gain the favour of the young boss, Pietro finds himself caught up in a broader power struggle and ends up wondering whether this dark, violent criminal life is really what he wants or if his love for Imma can save him from such a fate.
The six-part series is produced by Sky Studios and Cattleya. International distribution is handled by Beta Film, which sold the original series into more than 190 territories worldwide.
On the Gomorrah – Origins set in May this year, cast and crew are resetting between takes after taking over a patch of open farmland in Marianella, southeast of central Naples between the Mediterranean Sea and Mount Vesuvius. Beneath a large canopy, sheltering from the lunchtime sun, dozens of supporting artists sit and talk among themselves, each wearing period costume. Sheep and a donkey watch on from the adjacent fields that separate the set from a swathe of sand-coloured houses and apartment buildings.
When the cameras start rolling, Pietro, played by Luca Lubrano, and Imma (Tullia Venezia) appear at the end of a dirt road, their presence announced by the sound of their moped as they ride towards a cluster of buildings and outhouses to be greeted by Pietro’s friends. It’s the first time they have met Imma.
For numerous takes under the direction of Francesco Ghiaccio, Pietro rides the moped back and forth along the dusty track, which is lined with rusted car frames and piles of discarded wood. Rustic and rural, the scene is seemingly a far cry from the original Gomorrah series. Yet that was exactly the idea when Sky Studios Italia executive VP Nils Hartmann began discussions with Cattleya founder Riccardo Tozzi and D’Amore about potentially returning to the world of the Camorra and what that might look like.
“We pondered a lot about the success it had in Italy and all over the world,” Hartmann says. “With Riccardo and Marco, we started talking about the project. We needed the right idea – it’s not a marketing prequel because it is a brand that works, so let’s make another series.
“We decided to do it because it’s a different narrative, and it’s Pietro’s story. When they are young, it’s a different relationship in a different Naples, and that’s what convinced us. So it will have a different flavour, but it will be connected to the characters of the main series. It was important to have the right idea to make this decision. We would never make a sheer marketing project with such an important brand.”
The return of D’Amore was also central to the proposal. “We needed the right person and Marco was the only one who could do it,” Hartmann adds. The actor and director’s presence at the helm was also very important for producer Tozzi because “he’s part of the Gomorrah world.” Not only did he star in the “revolutionary” original series, but he also directed spin-off feature film L’Immortale (The Immortal) and returned behind the camera for episodes in seasons four and five.
“Making L’Immortale, we had the feeling that the world [in Origins] belonged to him,” Tozzi continues. But the challenge from a production perspective was to recreate the setting of the show, which he describes as a Naples that no longer exists. “The Naples after the 1970s, it’s a different world,” he says. “This required a reinvention of the city. It was more demanding production-wise, for production design and costumes. It was a great effort from all the departments involved.
“It’s a world that’s different from the Gomorrah world as we know it. It’s softer in a way, and it’s kind of nostalgic as well. It’s a world of feelings and tenderness. In the film, there’s no laughter, not one single laugh. Everything is very severe, very strict. While in this series, you cry, you laugh, you are moved. There’s a freshness of the young age, the adolescence and the spirit of adventure that you will see with the opening scenes of the series.”
Tozzi even compares Origins to the “flavour” of Once Upon a Time in America. “It’s Marco’s world. It’s his own gaze, his own universe. Gomorrah is something else, a different direction, different universe, and the polemics that surround Gomorrah will fall and disappear, because here we have a very different reality for the characters,” he says.
Rolling back the clock almost 50 years, the idea for the series came “fully complete” from creators Leonardo Fasoli, Maddalena Ravagli and Saviano, who collaborated on the original show. The screenplays were then written by Fasoli, Ravagli and D’Amore.
In order to create Origins, Fasoli and Ravagli returned to the extensive research they had undertaken into the lives of people living in Secondigliano and Scampia and how the Camorra was built on the back of illegal contraband and smuggling.
“While they were telling us all the stories, they wanted to make us properly understand that they were not born criminals,” Ravagli says, noting the rise of an illegal welfare state in the years after the Second World War after Italy was released from fascism, when its people were let down by government promises. “They told us the story of this place before, about what was destroyed and the Democratic Party that didn’t properly heal the wounds of the poor people because they wanted votes.
“We just thought this world was amazing. The people [in Naples] are not worse than in Milan, but this place has the different history. But at the same time, it was mirroring exactly what happened all over Italy. At the end of the 70s, there was a possibility to have a fairer democracy, but we had big problems with terrorism and deep-state manipulation. So this promise of a different democracy didn’t realise itself properly.”
Ravagli and Fasoli kept their research material and considered creating a new series from it while Gomorrah was still in production. “But it was impossible at the time,” Ravagli notes. Then when it ended with its fifth season in 2021, “we said, ‘Now maybe the time has come.’”
At the same time, they considered the fact that Pietro Savastano would have been 16 or 17 years old in approximately 1977. “It is exactly the time when he had to choose the man he wanted to be, so matching these two issues, that’s how the storytelling of Gomorrah – Origins happened.”
The clamour for D’Amore to lead this new series was undeniable, and the star himself ultimately could not resist the lure to come back to Gomorrah. He directs the first four episodes and is a co-writer and the artistic supervisor, with Ghiaccio directing the final two episodes. “They pushed me, they physically pushed me. They threw me onboard,” he jokes.
D’Amore admits his respect for the original drama meant he had doubts over signing up. “But since the very beginning, since we started talking, in the writing and in the spirit that people started working on the project, I felt a degree of freedom Gomorrah never had,” he says. “There’s a deep narration of that time, which is not only one of social change but also emotional change. It’s the story of ambitions and dreams that were very different for those human beings.”
He also notes that there’s “no correspondence between Don Pietro grown up and Don Pietro as a kid,” as it’s possible for a young man to not yet resemble the man he will eventually become. “We tell a historical story that is real, about the deep poverty of these characters in their childhood,” he says. “That is the context where we encounter this boy. We capture him in a wonderful stage of life, which is adolescence, when you’re entitled to dream even if you’re poor. That’s what he does. He dreams big.”
Alongside Lubrano and Venezia, the cast includes Francesco Pellegrino as Angelo ‘A Sirena, a reluctant gangster under pressure from a legacy he didn’t choose; Flavio Furno as O Paisano, a convict who is rallying followers for a new kind of Camorra; and Fabiola Balestriere as Annalisa Magliocca and the future Scianel, still a young mother under the fist of her violent husband.
D’Amore says the show’s young cast, most of whom are newcomers, “are even better than we were” in Gomorrah S1, which was first released in 2014. In particular, he proclaims that Lubrano, at just 16, “is one of the great Italian actors.”
To build the cast, which also includes thousands of supporting artists used across the series, “we searched for six or seven months,” Tozzi says. “We involved all the schools, from the biggest to the smallest in Naples. We travelled to meet them all. We did a lot of street casting and we met actors who had limited or no previous experience.”
Though turning down so many auditionees was “painful,” “we found a new generation of actors,” the producer says. “Only this city is able to deliver [actors] constantly. Only this city can do it. There’s no comparison with any other place on Earth. We said this since the very first season of Gomorrah. From the very first season, we were flabbergasted by the talent of young actors.”
Ravagli originally pitched Gomorrah – Origins across four seasons, which will ultimately link Pietro to his namesake in the original series. Development has already started on scripts for a second season. “We have organised in our minds the principal steps of the characters, and then deciding those principal steps, we let Pietro and the other characters run free in that environment,” she says.
But writing a prequel is a “different kind of work,” she notes, “and a little bit heartbreaking. Every day you write, and you always have in mind who he’s going to become. It’s like in a biopic, you tell the story, and you dig into a character that you know is dead or did something really bad. You live in a moment when, really, every choice is potentially open, but you know in a corner of your brain what choice he made, and how it ended up. It was, in some ways, heartbreaking because I think every human being deserves respect. I can’t just say he’s bad.”
Ahead of the show’s launch on Sky in January 2026, “none of you can imagine what Gomorrah – Origins will be, especially in the wake of Gomorra – La series,” D’Amore says. “This deep act of courage that Sky Studios and Cattleya started was a big challenge to pick up. We could have somehow lingered on the success [of the original]. But we went to the other side from the point of view of the grammar and the fantasy and creativity, on which everyone collaborated.”
D’Amore acknowledges the freedom he was given to make Gomorrah – Origins was a “big risk,” because “being free is a risk.” He adds: “But it’s also the most exciting challenge you can offer an author, a screenwriter, a director, a production designer or a costume designer. Looking at each other, we said we have to tell our Gomorrah – Origins, our new 70s, our new characters. We don’t know if we succeeded. We will discover it in the near future.”
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