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David Chase is making a comeback to television. The Sopranos visionary will write Project MKUltra, a mini-series centered around the CIA's covert cold war-era psychological manipulation project for the premium network.

About the Project

This new venture, initially revealed by industry sources, marks Chase's initial TV project following the era-defining HBO mob drama. The dramatic thriller, inspired by John Lisle's book "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on Sidney Gottlieb, referred to as the “black sorcerer” who led the MKUltra initiative, the CIA's covert hallucinogen experiments that tested psychedelic substances, hypnosis, and torture on willing and unwilling subjects from the early 1950s until it was halted in 1973.

Research Activities

Gottlieb directed these tests in the interest of state safety, to combat the perceived threat of Russian and Chinese mind control methods. He's also known as the inadvertent father of the LSD counterculture, as he introduced the drug to the agency in the mid-20th century, in an attempt to explore the potential of controlling the human mind. Certain participants were volunteers from the agency, armed forces personnel and university attendees who had awareness of the purpose of the experiments. Others, however, were psychiatric inmates, incarcerated persons, substance abusers, and prostitutes coerced or deceived into substance administration that in some cases left permanent damage.

Creator's Background

David Chase won multiple Emmy Awards for the Sopranos, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey mafia family widely credited with starting the peak era of “prestige” television. Since the show, starring the deceased James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, Chase has primarily concentrated on movie projects. He wrote, directed and produced the 2012 movie "Not Fade Away". He also co-wrote and produced The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel starring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021.

TV Comeback

His return to TV follows he declared the era of ambitious TV dramas in part shaped by the Sopranos to be a "temporary phase" that is now over. In an interview with a major publication for the series' quarter-century milestone, the 78-year-old claimed that he had been instructed to "simplify" his scripts in meetings with executives and warned against making TV content that was too complex.

Chase linked that perspective in partly to his encounter attempting to develop a show with the screenwriter Hannah Fidell about a high-end sex worker who finds herself in federal protection. In multiple discussions with executives, he said, they were told “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he said. “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."