🔗 Share this article

The acclaimed creator is making a return to television. The Sopranos creator is scripting MKUltra, a limited series focusing on the Central Intelligence Agency's secret cold war-era mind control program for the premium network.

About the Series

This new venture, first reported by entertainment insiders, marks David Chase's first series following the era-defining HBO crime series. The dramatic thriller, inspired by the author's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on Sidney Gottlieb, referred to as the “black sorcerer” who led the MKUltra initiative, the agency's covert psychedelic program that administered hallucinogenic drugs, hypnotic techniques, and torture on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from the early 1950s until it was halted in the early 1970s.

Research Activities

Gottlieb directed such experiments in the name of national security, 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 brought the drug to the CIA in the 1950s, in an effort to investigate the potential of controlling the human mind. Some test subjects were willing individuals from the CIA, military officers and university attendees who had knowledge of the nature of the studies. Others, on the other hand, were mental patients, incarcerated persons, substance abusers, and prostitutes forced or misled into drug dosages that in some cases left permanent damage.

Creator's Background

David Chase won multiple Emmy Awards for his hit series, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey-based crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with ushering in the peak era of high-quality TV. After the series, featuring the deceased James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, Chase 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 Sopranos prequel starring Gandolfini’s son, that premiered in 2021.

TV Comeback

His return to television follows he stated the era of sophisticated television series in part shaped by his show to be a "temporary phase" that is now over. Speaking to a leading newspaper for the series' quarter-century milestone, the septuagenarian asserted that he had been told to “dumb down” his scripts in discussions with studio heads and advised against making television that was overly intricate.

He linked that perspective 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 witness protection. In numerous meetings with producers, he said, they were told “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he remarked. “I guess the stockholders?”

"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. "Regarding streaming leaders? The situation is deteriorating. We are reverting to previous conditions."