The Sopranos Mastermind David Chase to Write HBO Mini-Series on CIA Drug Program
The acclaimed creator is set for a comeback to television. The iconic mob drama visionary will write Project MKUltra, a limited series focusing on the CIA's covert Cold War period psychological manipulation project for HBO.
About the Project
This new venture, first reported by entertainment insiders, marks David Chase's initial TV project following the era-defining HBO crime series. This intense narrative, inspired by the author's book Project Mind Control, zeroes in on Sidney Gottlieb, referred to as the “black sorcerer” who oversaw Project MKUltra, the CIA's clandestine hallucinogen experiments that tested psychedelic substances, hypnotic techniques, and torture on willing and unwilling subjects from 1953 until it was terminated in the early 1970s.
The Experiments
Gottlieb oversaw these tests in the name of state safety, to combat the alleged danger of Soviet and Chinese “brainwashing” techniques. He is also regarded as the accidental pioneer of the psychedelic movement, as he brought the substance to the CIA in the 1950s, in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Certain participants were volunteers from the agency, military officers and college students who had awareness of the purpose of the experiments. Additional subjects, however, were mental patients, prisoners, substance abusers, and sex workers coerced or misled into drug dosages that in some cases resulted in long-term harm.
Chase's Legacy
David Chase earned five Emmys for the Sopranos, a complex drama about a New Jersey crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with ushering in the golden age of high-quality TV. Since the show, featuring the deceased James Gandolfini, wrapped in 2007, Chase has primarily concentrated on feature films. 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 starring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021.
Return to Television
His return to TV follows he declared the period of ambitious television series in some ways shaped by his show to be a “blip” that is now over. In an interview with a leading newspaper for the series' quarter-century milestone, the 78-year-old asserted that he had been instructed to "simplify" his scripts in meetings with studio heads and warned against making TV content that was overly intricate.
Chase attributed that perspective in part to his experience attempting to develop a series with the writer Hannah Fidell about a high-end sex worker who ends up in witness protection. In numerous meetings with executives, he noted, they were told "the harsh reality" that it was too complex. “Who is this all really for?” 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."
