🔗 Share this article

The acclaimed creator is set for a comeback to television. The Sopranos creator is scripting MKUltra, a mini-series focusing on the CIA's secret cold war-era mind control program for the premium network.

About the Project

This new venture, initially revealed by entertainment insiders, will be David Chase's first series since the era-defining HBO mob drama. The dramatic thriller, based on the author's non-fiction work Project Mind Control, focuses on the notorious scientist, known as the "dark magician" who oversaw Project MKUltra, the CIA's clandestine psychedelic program that tested hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, and physical coercion on willing and unwilling subjects from 1953 until it was halted in the early 1970s.

Research Activities

Gottlieb directed these tests in the interest of national security, to combat the perceived threat of Russian and Chinese “brainwashing” techniques. He's also known as the accidental pioneer of the LSD counterculture, as he brought the drug to the agency in the 1950s, in an attempt to investigate the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Certain participants were willing individuals from the CIA, armed forces personnel and university attendees who had knowledge of the purpose of the experiments. Others, however, were mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers forced or misled into drug dosages that in certain instances resulted in long-term harm.

Chase's Legacy

David Chase won five Emmys for his hit series, a complex drama about a New Jersey-based mafia family widely credited with ushering in the golden age of “prestige” television. Since the show, starring the late James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, the creator has mostly focused on feature films. He wrote, directed and produced the 2012 movie Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos starring Gandolfini’s son, that debuted in 2021.

Return to Television

This comeback to TV comes after he stated the period of sophisticated television series in some ways shaped by the Sopranos to be a "temporary phase" that is now finished. Speaking to a major publication for the series' quarter-century milestone, the septuagenarian asserted that he had been instructed to "simplify" his screenplays in discussions with studio heads and warned against making television that was too complex.

He attributed that view in part to his encounter attempting to develop a series with the writer Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who ends up in witness protection. In numerous meetings with producers, he noted, they were told “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he remarked. "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 added. “And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”