A slow start to Monday, so this morning I’ll be posting a few scoops and rumors from our newsletter.
This year marks the 27th 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 one if the shows 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 the “Sopranos” spinoff “The Many Saints of Newark.” But he is now about to direct the most ambitious film of his career.
Chase is diving deep down a rabbit hole with “The Dealer’s Daughter,” which tackles the CIA’s infamous MKUltra experiment. This is part of Chase’s first-look deal with Warner Bros. and was originally supposed to be an HBO series, but I’ve heard it is now a feature film over at Warner Bros, with casting currently underway and production set to begin this October.
The project is an adaptation of John Lisle’s nonfiction book, “Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKUltra.” Chase recently secured the rights and tapped “Sopranos” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” writer Terrence Winter to adapt the book.
The film 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, somewhat ironically, credited as an 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—could inevitably lead you to connections with the JFK assassination and the Manson murders.
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.
If the movie is as rough as some in the industry seem to fear, that teaser may have been less of a marketing campaign and more of a public plea for somebody to finally take the damn thing.