Following the premiere of MTV’s docuseries “Families of the Mafia” last week, the network was sent a cease-and-desist letter from the company that now owns “Mob Wives,” claiming copyright infringement, a source told us.
Karen Gravano — the daughter of “Sammy the Bull” Gravano — appears in both shows. Karen told Page Six when asked during a brief interview what she sees as the difference between the two shows: “ ‘Mob Wives’ focused on the women. This show focuses on the parents raising their kids. It’s a multigenerational show that really comes full circle when you see the struggles the parents come from and wanting the kids to do better and learn from their mistakes.”
The buzzy new “Families of the Mafia” was filmed over the course of two years. It follows the infamous former underboss of the Gambino crime family Sammy the Bull as he gets out of prison in Arizona in 2017 and he reunites with his Staten Island family.
The show also follows the lives of some neighboring families, and is modeled on MTV’s 2019 reality series “Made in Staten Island,” which also featured Karen. That show drew the ire of some locals, who even created a Change.org petition to stop it from airing, saying it portrayed Staten Island “as a cesspool of gangsters, meatheads and low lives.”
“Mob Wives” debuted in 2011 and ran for six seasons, ending in 2016.
The VH1 hit was produced by the Weinstein Company, which imploded in bankruptcy as the result of Harvey Weinstein’s sex-crimes scandal. Lantern Entertainment, which bought the Weinstein Company in 2018, joined forces last year with former MGM CEO Gary Barber to create Spyglass Media Group as a finance and production company — and which now holds the rights to all Weinstein properties.
A rep for MTV had no comment on the cease-and-desist letter. Reps for Spyglass didn’t comment.
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