The Sopranos creator David Chase is returning to HBO with a new limited series titled Project: MKUltra, based on one of the most controversial chapters in CIA history.
The series will be adapted from John Lisle’s non-fiction book Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKUltra, as per Deadline. It marks Chase’s first television project since The Sopranos, the acclaimed mob drama that earned him seven Emmy Awards.
The story of Project: MKUltra revolves around chemist Sidney Gottlieb, who led the CIA’s notorious MKUltra psychedelic programme during the Cold War. The real-life operation, which ran from 1953 to 1973, involved illegal human experiments that tested mind control techniques through the covert use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD.
Gottlieb is often cited as an unlikely influence behind the rise of the 1960s counterculture movement.
Chase’s The Sopranos, starring the late James Gandolfini alongside Lorraine Bracco and Michael Imperioli, aired from 1999 to 2007 and is widely regarded as a landmark in modern television storytelling.
Following The Sopranos, Chase wrote, directed and produced the 2012 feature Not Fade Away, and later co-wrote and produced The Many Saints of Newark (2021), a prequel film set in the Sopranos universe.
