🔗 Share this article

The acclaimed creator is set for a comeback to television. The iconic mob drama visionary will write MKUltra, a limited series centered around the CIA's secret cold war-era psychological manipulation project for the premium network.

Exploring the Series

The project, initially revealed by industry sources, will be David Chase's initial TV project following the era-defining HBO crime series. This intense narrative, based on the author's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", focuses on Sidney Gottlieb, known as the "dark magician" who oversaw Project MKUltra, the CIA's covert psychedelic program that tested psychedelic substances, hypnotic techniques, and torture on willing and unwilling subjects from 1953 until it was halted in 1973.

The Experiments

The scientist directed such experiments in the name of state safety, to combat the perceived threat of Soviet and Chinese “brainwashing” techniques. He is also regarded as the accidental pioneer of the LSD counterculture, as he introduced the drug to the agency in the 1950s, in an attempt to explore the potential of controlling the human mind. Certain participants were volunteers from the agency, military officers and university attendees who had knowledge of the purpose of the experiments. Others, however, were psychiatric inmates, prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes forced or deceived into substance administration that in certain instances resulted in long-term harm.

Chase's Legacy

Chase won five Emmys for his hit series, a complex drama about a New Jersey-based crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with ushering in the peak era of “prestige” television. After the series, starring the late James Gandolfini, wrapped in 2007, the creator has primarily concentrated on movie projects. He authored, helmed, and produced the 2012 film Not Fade Away. He also co-wrote and produced The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos starring Gandolfini’s son, that premiered in 2021.

Return to Television

This comeback to TV follows he stated the era of sophisticated TV dramas in some ways defined by the Sopranos to be a "temporary phase" that is now over. Speaking to a leading newspaper for the show’s 25th anniversary, the septuagenarian claimed that he had been told to “dumb down” his scripts in discussions with studio heads and advised against producing television that was too complex.

He attributed that view in partly to his experience trying to make a series with the writer Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who ends up in witness protection. In multiple discussions with executives, he said, they were informed "the harsh reality" that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he said. "Presumably, the investors?"

“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. “And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”