David Chase Returns to TV for the First Time Since ‘The Sopranos’ With MKUltra HBO Series

This year marks the 26th anniversary of “The Sopranos,” quite possibly the most acclaimed and influential show of all time—and for good reason. Created by David Chase, the mobster drama is credited with kickstarting what would become the modern “Golden Age” of television.

Since “The Sopranos” bowed out in 2007, Chase has only dabbled in film, directing 2012’s “Not Fade Away,” and writing Sopranos spinoff “Many Saints of Newark,” but he has never returned to television—until now.

According to Deadline, Chase is diving deep down a rabbit hole by tackling the CIA’s infamous MKUltra experiment for HBO. This is part of Chase’s first-look deal with Warner Bros.

Chase’s first series since The Sopranos is an adaptation of John Lisle’s non-fiction book Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKUltra. He has secured the rights and will write the scripts himself.

The series will explore the enigmatic figure of Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA chemist and spymaster nicknamed The Black Sorcerer. Gottlieb ran the MKUltra psychedelic program, infamous for pushing mind-control experiments to lethal extremes on both willing and unwitting participants during the Cold War. He is also oddly credited as the accidental architect of the LSD-driven counterculture.

If you haven’t heard about MKUltra, the CIA’s secretive mind control experiments, I wouldn’t recommend going down this rabbit hole because it’ll never end. If you’re a total conspiracy theorist, the unethical nature of these experiments, which involved administering LSD and other substances to unwitting subjects, including mental patients, prisoners, and sex workers, the plot could inevitably lead you to connections with the JFK assassination and Charles Manson murders.

Before you know it, extensively reading about MKUltra will lead to every government agency and weird historical coincidence starting to looking suspicious.

Before you know it, diving deep into MKUltra can make every government agency and strange historical coincidence start to look suspicious. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to hit “order” on Lisle’s book in my Amazon cart.

With all that said, and before he tackles MKUltra, Chase and writer Terence Winter are teaming up on an untitled horror film. Chase plans to direct and co-write the project, which Deadline confirms is scheduled to begin production “early next year.”