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David Chase is making a return to television. The iconic mob drama creator is scripting MKUltra, a limited series centered around the Central Intelligence Agency's covert cold war-era psychological manipulation project for the premium network.

About the Project

This new venture, first reported by entertainment insiders, will be David Chase's first series since the era-defining 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 Project MKUltra, the agency's covert hallucinogen experiments that tested hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, and physical coercion on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from 1953 until it was halted in the early 1970s.

Research Activities

The scientist directed such experiments in the interest of national security, to counter the alleged danger of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. He's also known as the accidental pioneer of the LSD counterculture, as he introduced the drug to the CIA in the mid-20th century, in an effort to investigate the potential of manipulating human consciousness. Some test subjects were volunteers from the CIA, military officers and college students who had knowledge of the nature of the experiments. Others, however, were psychiatric inmates, incarcerated persons, drug addicts, and prostitutes coerced or misled into substance administration that in certain instances resulted in long-term harm.

Creator's Background

David Chase earned multiple Emmy Awards for the Sopranos, a complex drama about a New Jersey-based crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with ushering in the golden age of high-quality TV. Since the show, starring the deceased James Gandolfini, wrapped in 2007, the creator has mostly focused 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 prequel to The Sopranos featuring Gandolfini’s son, that debuted in 2021.

TV Comeback

This comeback to television follows he stated the period of sophisticated television series in some ways defined by the Sopranos to be a "temporary phase" that is now finished. Speaking to a leading newspaper 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 producing television that was overly intricate.

He linked that view in part to his experience attempting to develop a series with the writer 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 harsh reality" that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" 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 continued. "Regarding streaming leaders? The situation is deteriorating. We are reverting to previous conditions."