The Sopranos Creator David Chase to Write HBO Limited Series on CIA Drug Program

The acclaimed creator is set for a return to the small screen. The iconic mob drama visionary is scripting MKUltra, a limited series centered around the CIA's covert Cold War period psychological manipulation project for HBO.

About the Project

The project, first reported by entertainment insiders, marks Chase's initial TV project since the groundbreaking HBO mob drama. This intense narrative, based on John Lisle's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", focuses on the notorious scientist, referred to as the “black sorcerer” who led Project MKUltra, the agency's covert psychedelic program that tested psychedelic substances, hypnosis, and torture on willing and unwilling subjects from 1953 until it was terminated in the early 1970s.

The Experiments

The scientist directed such experiments in the interest of national security, to counter the alleged danger of Soviet and Chinese “brainwashing” techniques. He's also known as the inadvertent father of the psychedelic movement, as he brought the substance to the CIA in the 1950s, in an effort to explore the potential of manipulating the human mind. Certain participants were willing individuals from the agency, military officers and university attendees who had awareness of the purpose of the experiments. Additional subjects, on the other hand, were psychiatric inmates, prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes forced or misled into substance administration that in some cases left permanent damage.

Chase's Legacy

Chase earned five Emmys for his hit series, a complex drama about a New Jersey mafia family widely credited with starting the peak era of high-quality TV. Since the show, featuring the late James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, Chase has mostly focused on movie projects. He authored, helmed, and produced the 2012 movie Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on "The Many Saints of Newark", a prequel to The Sopranos featuring Gandolfini’s son, that premiered in 2021.

TV Comeback

This comeback to television comes after he stated the era of sophisticated TV dramas in part shaped by the Sopranos 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 told to "simplify" his screenplays in discussions with executives and advised against making television that was too complex.

Chase linked that perspective in partly to his encounter trying to make a series with the screenwriter Hannah Fidell about a high-end sex worker who finds herself in witness protection. In multiple discussions with executives, he said, they were informed “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. "What audience is this targeting?" he said. “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. “And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”