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David Chase is making a return to television. The iconic mob drama visionary will write Project MKUltra, a limited series centered around the CIA's secret cold war-era psychological manipulation project for HBO.

Exploring the Series

This new venture, first reported by industry sources, marks Chase's first series following the groundbreaking HBO crime series. The dramatic thriller, based on John Lisle's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on the notorious scientist, known as the "dark magician" who led Project MKUltra, the CIA's clandestine hallucinogen experiments that tested psychedelic substances, hypnotic techniques, and physical coercion on willing and unwilling subjects from 1953 until it was halted in the early 1970s.

Research Activities

The scientist directed these tests in the interest of state safety, to counter the perceived threat of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. 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 attempt to investigate the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Certain participants were volunteers from the CIA, military officers and university attendees who had awareness of the nature of the studies. Additional subjects, however, were mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers forced or misled into drug dosages that in certain instances resulted in permanent damage.

Chase's Legacy

Chase earned five Emmys for the Sopranos, a complex drama about a New Jersey-based mafia family widely credited with ushering in the golden age of “prestige” television. After the series, 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 featuring Gandolfini’s son, that premiered in 2021.

TV Comeback

His return to TV comes after he declared the era of ambitious television series in part shaped by the Sopranos to be a "temporary phase" that is now finished. Speaking to a major publication for the show’s 25th anniversary, the 78-year-old claimed that he had been told to "simplify" his scripts in meetings with studio heads and warned against producing TV content that was too complex.

He attributed that view in partly to his experience trying to make a show with the screenwriter Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who finds herself in federal protection. In multiple discussions with executives, he said, they were informed “the unfortunate truth” that it was not straightforward enough. “Who is this all really for?” he remarked. "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.”