The Sopranos creator David Chase returns to HBO with an exciting new series
David Chase is developing a new television project for HBO, which will focus on Project MKUltra, a secret CIA program from the 1950s…
He’s done with The Sopranos.
Four years after the release of the film Many Saints of Newark about Tony’s youth, and almost 20 years after the broadcast of the finale of the cult series, David Chase is finally embarking on a new project.
The 80-year-old screenwriter and creator has signed on to develop a new mystery thriller for HBO. He will explore another side of America. Project: MKUltra, a mini-series inspired by John Lisle’s book, Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKUltra, will focus on the CIA’s famous secret program launched in the 1950s, aimed at testing mind control techniques using psychedelic drugs (including LSD), hypnosis and others extreme methods. The official goal: to find ways to manipulate or “reprogram” the human mind, particularly in the context of the Cold War.
Presented as a dramatic thriller, the project will tell the story of chemist and spy Sidney Gottlieb, nicknamed “the Dark Wizard”, who in the 1950s and 60s directed this clandestine program based on psychedelic experiments on volunteers – and sometimes on unwitting guinea pigs.
This MKUltra program has already made its mark on popular culture: it notably inspired Stranger Things, the experiments carried out on Eleven and the other children in Hawkins’ laboratory directly echoing the real practices of the project.
David Chase’s series promises to offer a realistic and historical rereading, far from the codes of science fiction, to return to the very real terror of the Cold War and the excesses of psychological espionage.
Project: MKUltra will be produced by Rivera Pictures with David Chase and Nicole Lambert executive producing.
No release date or casting has yet been announced.
