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David Chase is set for a return to the small screen. The iconic mob drama visionary will write Project MKUltra, a limited series centered around the CIA's secret Cold War period psychological manipulation project for the premium network.

Exploring the Series

This new venture, first reported by entertainment insiders, will be David Chase's first series following the era-defining HBO mob drama. This intense narrative, inspired by John Lisle's book "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on Sidney Gottlieb, referred to as the “black sorcerer” who oversaw the MKUltra initiative, the agency's clandestine hallucinogen experiments that tested psychedelic substances, hypnosis, and physical coercion on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from 1953 until it was halted in 1973.

The Experiments

Gottlieb oversaw such experiments in the name of national security, to counter the perceived threat of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. He is also regarded as the inadvertent father of the LSD counterculture, as he brought the substance to the CIA in the 1950s, in an effort to investigate the possibilities of manipulating human consciousness. Certain participants were willing individuals from the CIA, military officers and college students who had knowledge of the nature of the studies. Others, on the other hand, were psychiatric inmates, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers coerced or deceived into drug dosages that in some cases left permanent damage.

Creator's Background

Chase earned multiple Emmy Awards for his hit series, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey mafia family widely credited with ushering in the golden age of “prestige” television. After the series, starring the deceased James Gandolfini, wrapped in 2007, the creator has mostly focused on movie projects. He wrote, directed and produced the 2012 film Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos featuring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021.

Return to Television

His return to television comes after he declared the era of sophisticated television series in part defined by the Sopranos to be a “blip” that is now over. Speaking to a major publication for the show’s 25th anniversary, the 78-year-old asserted that he had been instructed to “dumb down” his screenplays in meetings with executives and warned against making television that was too complex.

Chase attributed that view in part to his encounter trying to make a show with the screenwriter Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who ends up in federal protection. In numerous meetings with executives, he noted, they were told "the harsh reality" that it was too complex. “Who is this all really for?” he remarked. “I guess the stockholders?”

“We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus,” he added. "Regarding streaming leaders? The situation is deteriorating. We are reverting to previous conditions."