Miles Teller stars in "The Offer"

Whether said in jest to friends or in direct homage to the film, arguably some of Hollywood's best and most memorable lines come from Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 classic "The Godfather." Now, 50 years after the film's release (and 53 years after the release of Mario Puzo's source novel), CBS's streaming service, Paramount , welcomes "The Offer," a new miniseries based on the making of the film saga. Catch it when the first three episodes premiere Thursday, April 28.

Based on the book by "Godfather" producer Albert S. Ruddy and adapted for the screen by the writing team of Michael Tolkin ("Escape at Dannemora"), Mona Mira ("A Little Late With Lilly Singh"), Nikki Toscano ("Revenge") and Leslie Grief ("Sun Records"), "The Offer" follows Ruddy's experiences producing the Academy Award-winning film. Often discussed as a very trying and dramatic experience (and not just on camera) — not least due to interference from Frank Sinatra ("Guys and Dolls," 1955) and other possible Mafia-affiliated big wigs — Ruddy's unique perspective allows fans of the film series the chance to step back in time for the making of the Marlon Brando-led ("On the Waterfront," 1954) first film.

Perpetually rising star Miles Teller, known to many moviegoers for his leading roles in "War Dogs" (2016), "Whiplash" (2014) and the highly anticipated film "Top Gun: Maverick" (to be released next month in North America), stars as Canadian-born film producer Ruddy, who petitioned Paramount for "The Godfather" to be made — a fact that made Paramount the perfect outlet to welcome this new miniseries.

Joining Teller to bring the making-of story to life are Dan Fogler ("Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," 2016) as director Coppola, Patrick Gallo ("The Irishman," 2019) as author Puzo, Matthew Goode ("A Discovery of Witches") as producer Robert Evans, Juno Temple ("Ted Lasso") as talent agent Bettye McCartt, Giovanni Ribisi ("Gone in 60 Seconds," 2000) as crime boss Joe Colombo, Burn Gorman ("The Expanse") as industrialist and Gulf Western owner Charles Bluhdorn, and Colin Hanks ("King Kong," 2005) as Gulf Western executive and Paramount Pictures strong-arm Barry Lapidus.

Alongside showing many run-ins with L.A.-based crime families, casting troubles and "tough" on-location shoots, "The Offer" illustrates the trouble Ruddy went to to secure the proper format for the film.

"When Paramount bought the book rights, Stanley Jaffe, then president, and Robert Evans, vice-president in charge of production, first thought of making it into a tight underworld drama which would run an hour and a half, more or less," Ruddy said following the film's release. This shortened version may be hard to imagine now, as the final product comes in at a whopping two hours and 55 minutes (for Part 1), but Ruddy claims it took a lot of convincing on both his part and Puzo's to get the film extended beyond Paramount's suggested runtime.

Dan Fogler (center) and the cast of "The Offer"

Once that first mission was accomplished, they had just to "get Brando" (per Puzo's demand), but that was hardly the end of their troubles.

The 10-episode miniseries chronicles the highs and lows of the making of "The Godfather," from the film's conception, through filming all 163 pages of the script and on to the (mostly) secretive first screening. Little did anyone know that one party-crasher at that private Paramount event would begin a craze that has so far endured half a century of fandom.

"When the picture was finished, we had a very secretive screening at the studio for Paramount officials, strictly invitational," Ruddy told Wanda Hale of the Daily News in March 1972. "We thought we were well protected from crashers. Somehow, Ivor Davis of London Express got in and jumped the gun and wrote a rave review for his paper. We were as astonished as anybody else."

Fans of the popular film franchise are hardly astonished to see "The Offer" hit the small screen, however.

"The Godfather" boasts a near-perfect score of 97% on popular aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, while the Hollywood Reporter ranks the film as the No. 2 greatest film of all time, second only to the 1941 Orson Welles ("Touch of Evil," 1958) masterpiece, "Citizen Kane."

Also dubbed "the greatest movie almost never made" in the limited series' official trailer, released at the end of March, the road to "The Godfather" was paved with lies, backroom deals, risks and, of course, lots and lots of drama. The trailer, which comes in at just over two minutes and shows everything from small (but accumulating) fibs to physical violence and the use of heavy firearms, sets the tone for the series — and that tone is tense, from the early stages to casting and beyond.

"The war over casting the family Corleone was more volatile than the war the Corleone family fought on screen," producer Evans (played by Goode in "The Offer") wrote in his 1994 memoir titled "The Kid Stays in the Picture." In the end, however, the tumultuous decision to cast not just one Hollywood superstar, but three — Brando, Al Pacino ("Scarface," 1983) and James Caan ("Misery," 1990) — was the best decision of all.

Now it's time to see how the new cast holds up as they tell the story of the story almost never told.

The first three hour-long episodes of "The Offer" debut Thursday, April 28, on Paramount , with the remaining seven instalments to launch weekly on Thursdays thereafter.