Short? Maybe not.

“The Sopranos” ran as long as its creator, David Chase, wanted it to. And HBO mini-series have been as long as 12 hours.

So it’s unlikely that Chase will take a minimalist approach with his just-announced history of Hollywood moviemaking.

That’s okay: An exhaustive television history of Hollywood, done right, could be television worth watching. By definition it will be more compelling than the mediocre and vastly contrived “reality” shows cluttering up the airwaves. Isn’t their 15 minutes about over?

The Chase mini-series, to be titled “Ribbon of Dreams,” a reference to Orson Welles’ description of film, could go into production as soon as early next year, according to a report by New York Times television writer Bill Carter.

Here’s what’s on order, according to Carter:

“The series, “Ribbon of Dreams,” will begin with the behind-the-scenes roles played by two fictional characters — one a cowboy with some violence in his past, the other a mechanical engineer — who work for the famous early film director D. W. Griffith. It will follow them and their professional heirs through the development of the movie business.

The project is expected to cover each period of Hollywood movies, beginning with silent westerns and comedies, through the golden era of the studio system, to the emergence of auteur film directors in the 1970s, and up to the current mix of studio blockbusters and independent films. The cast of characters will also include many of the biggest names of Hollywood’s past, including John Wayne and Bette Davis.”

Chase will write and executive-produce the mini-series, and will direct the first few episodes, according to a piece in The Hollywood Reporter.

Also in the works is a similarly themed project from Turner Classic Movies, a 10-part documentary titled “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood.”

Set to premiere in 2010, that miniseries will cover more than a century of history, dating all the way back to Thomas Edison’s inventions. Read more about “Moguls and Movie Stars” here.

Here’s trusting that Chase and the other writers of the HBO series, and the creators of the TCM series, dug up some new research and consulted Gerald Mast’s “A Short History of the Movies” and other classic film-history books.