🔗 Share this article

David Chase is set for a comeback to the small screen. The Sopranos visionary is scripting Project MKUltra, a limited series centered around the CIA's secret Cold War period mind control program for the premium network.

About the Project

This new venture, first reported by industry sources, marks Chase's first series since the groundbreaking HBO mob drama. The dramatic thriller, based on John Lisle's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", focuses on Sidney Gottlieb, known as the “black sorcerer” who led the MKUltra initiative, the agency's covert hallucinogen experiments that tested psychedelic substances, hypnotic techniques, and torture on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from the early 1950s until it was halted in the early 1970s.

The Experiments

Gottlieb directed these tests in the name of national security, to counter the perceived threat of Russian and Chinese “brainwashing” techniques. He's also known as the inadvertent father of the LSD counterculture, as he introduced the substance to the agency in the mid-20th century, in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Certain participants were willing individuals from the CIA, military officers and university attendees who had awareness of the purpose of the studies. Additional subjects, on the other hand, were mental patients, incarcerated persons, drug addicts, and sex workers forced or deceived into substance administration that in some cases resulted in long-term harm.

Creator's Background

David Chase earned five Emmys for his hit series, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with starting the peak era of high-quality TV. Since the show, starring the deceased James Gandolfini, wrapped in 2007, Chase has primarily concentrated on movie projects. He authored, helmed, and produced the 2012 movie Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos featuring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021.

TV Comeback

This comeback to television follows he declared the era of sophisticated TV dramas in some ways shaped by the Sopranos to be a “blip” that is now finished. In an interview with a leading newspaper for the show’s 25th anniversary, the septuagenarian claimed that he had been instructed to "simplify" his scripts in meetings with studio heads and warned against producing TV content that was overly intricate.

He linked that view in partly to his encounter trying to make a series with the writer Hannah Fidell about a high-end sex worker who ends up in witness protection. In numerous meetings with producers, he said, they were informed “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he said. "Presumably, the investors?"

"It appears we are disoriented, and viewers struggle to concentrate, hence we cannot create content that is overly logical, engaging, and demands focus from the audience," he continued. “And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”