🔗 Share this article

David Chase is set for a return to the small screen. The iconic mob drama visionary will write MKUltra, a limited series focusing on the Central Intelligence Agency's secret Cold War period psychological manipulation project for the premium network.

About the Project

This new venture, first reported by industry sources, marks David Chase's first series since the groundbreaking HBO crime series. This intense narrative, based on John Lisle's non-fiction work Project Mind Control, zeroes in on the notorious scientist, referred to as the "dark magician" who led Project MKUltra, the agency's clandestine hallucinogen experiments that tested hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, and torture on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from the early 1950s until it was halted in 1973.

Research Activities

The scientist directed such experiments in the name of state safety, to counter the alleged danger of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. He's also known as the accidental pioneer of the psychedelic movement, as he introduced the substance to the CIA in the mid-20th century, in an effort to investigate the potential of manipulating human consciousness. Some test subjects were willing individuals from the agency, armed forces personnel and college students who had knowledge of the purpose of the experiments. Additional subjects, on the other hand, were psychiatric inmates, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers coerced or deceived into substance administration that in some cases resulted in long-term harm.

Chase's Legacy

Chase won multiple Emmy Awards for the Sopranos, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey-based mafia family broadly acknowledged with ushering in the peak era of high-quality TV. After the series, starring the late James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, Chase has mostly focused on movie projects. He wrote, directed and produced the 2012 film 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

His return to TV follows he declared the era of ambitious television series in some ways shaped by his show to be a "temporary phase" that is now finished. Speaking to a leading newspaper for the show’s 25th anniversary, the septuagenarian claimed that he had been told to "simplify" his scripts in discussions with executives and advised against producing television that was too complex.

Chase linked that view in partly to his experience attempting to develop a show with the writer Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who ends up in federal protection. In multiple discussions with producers, he noted, they were told "the harsh reality" that it was too complex. "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."