🔗 Share this article The Sopranos Creator David Chase to Write HBO Mini-Series on CIA Mind Control Initiative David Chase is making a return to television. The Sopranos visionary is scripting MKUltra, a mini-series centered around the CIA's secret Cold War period mind control program for HBO. About the Project This new venture, first reported by entertainment insiders, will be Chase's initial TV project since the groundbreaking HBO mob drama. This intense narrative, inspired by John Lisle's non-fiction work "Project Mind Control", zeroes in on Sidney Gottlieb, known as the “black sorcerer” who oversaw the MKUltra initiative, the agency's clandestine hallucinogen experiments that administered psychedelic substances, hypnosis, and physical coercion on volunteers and non-consenting individuals from 1953 until it was terminated in the early 1970s. Research Activities Gottlieb directed these tests in the interest of state safety, to combat the perceived threat of Soviet and Chinese mind control methods. He's also known as the accidental pioneer of the psychedelic movement, as he introduced the drug to the agency in the mid-20th century, in an effort to explore the potential of manipulating the human mind. Some test subjects were volunteers from the CIA, armed forces personnel and university attendees who had awareness of the nature of the studies. Others, however, were mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers forced or misled into substance administration that in some cases resulted in long-term harm. Chase's Legacy Chase earned multiple Emmy Awards for his hit series, a intricate narrative about a New Jersey-based crime syndicate broadly acknowledged with starting the peak era 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 film Not Fade Away. Additionally, he collaborated on "The Many Saints of Newark", a Sopranos prequel featuring Michael Gandolfini, that premiered in 2021. Return to Television His return to TV comes after he stated the period of ambitious TV dramas in part defined by the Sopranos to be a “blip” that is now over. Speaking to a leading newspaper for the series' quarter-century milestone, the septuagenarian claimed that he had been instructed to “dumb down” his scripts in meetings with studio heads and advised against producing TV content that was overly intricate. He attributed that perspective in partly to his encounter trying to make a show with the writer Hannah Fidell about a luxury escort who ends up in witness protection. In multiple discussions with executives, he noted, they were informed "the harsh reality" 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.”