🔗 Share this article Sopranos Creator David Chase to Write HBO Limited Series on CIA Drug Program The acclaimed creator is making a comeback to the small screen. The iconic mob drama creator is scripting Project MKUltra, a limited series centered around the Central Intelligence Agency's secret Cold War period mind control program for the premium network. About the Series This new venture, initially revealed by industry sources, marks David Chase's initial TV project following the groundbreaking HBO mob drama. This intense narrative, inspired by the author's book "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on the notorious scientist, known as the “black sorcerer” who oversaw the MKUltra initiative, the CIA's covert hallucinogen experiments that tested hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, and physical coercion on willing and unwilling subjects from the early 1950s until it was halted in 1973. The Experiments Gottlieb oversaw these tests in the interest of national security, to counter the alleged danger of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. He's also known as the inadvertent father of the LSD counterculture, as he introduced the drug to the agency in the mid-20th century, in an effort to investigate the potential of manipulating human consciousness. Some test subjects were willing individuals from the CIA, military officers and university attendees who had knowledge of the nature of the experiments. Additional subjects, on the other hand, were psychiatric inmates, prisoners, substance abusers, and prostitutes forced or deceived into drug dosages that in certain instances resulted in permanent damage. Creator's Background Chase earned multiple Emmy Awards for his hit series, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey mafia family broadly acknowledged with ushering in the golden age of “prestige” television. Since the show, starring the late James Gandolfini, concluded in 2007, Chase has mostly focused on feature films. He wrote, directed and produced the 2012 movie Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on "The Many Saints of Newark", a prequel to The Sopranos starring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021. TV Comeback His return to television follows he declared the era of sophisticated TV dramas in some ways shaped by the Sopranos to be a “blip” that is now finished. In an interview with a leading newspaper for the show’s 25th anniversary, the septuagenarian claimed that he had been told to "simplify" his screenplays in discussions with executives and advised against producing TV content that was too complex. He attributed that view in partly to his experience attempting to develop a series with the writer Hannah Fidell about a high-end sex worker who ends up in federal protection. In numerous meetings with executives, he said, they were informed "the harsh reality" that it was too complex. "What audience is this targeting?" he remarked. "Presumably, the investors?" "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. “And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”