David Chase is coming back to TV, swapping mobsters for CIA mind control

The Sopranos creator has a new project set up at HBO for the first time in 18 years: Project: MKUltra

By William Hughes  |  October 22, 2025 | 8:18pm
David Chase. Photo: HBO Max
TV News David Chase
David Chase is coming back to TV, swapping mobsters for CIA mind control

It’s been so long since The Sopranos creator David Chase last wrote for television that a child conceived—possibly by parents with a deep erotic fascination for onion rings, ambiguity, and Journey—on the night that his last episode of TV aired would now be pushing quickly toward their 18th birthday. Chase has written a few movies in that time, including the shruggingly received Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints Of Newark. But there’s been no actual television from the man who helped kick off “The Golden Age Of TV.” Now that’s apparently set to change, as Deadline reports that Chase has begun development on a new limited series at his old stomping grounds of HBO, centered on CIA mind control projects from the 1950s and ’60s.

Project: MKUltra will center on the long-running, wide-ranging government project of the same name, overseen by chemist and espionage guy Sidney Gottlieb, a.k.a. “The Black Sorcerer.” As that nickname suggests, Gottlieb is an infamous figure in the words of both psychology and spycraft, with MKUltra pursuing some extremely bizarre, dangerous, and even allegedly fatal experiments in pursuit of interrogation drugs and possible brainwashing projects. (These often involved dosing people with LSD, although the full extent of the project is difficult to suss out, because the CIA destroyed big chunks of its documentation of the project in 1973—two years before a congressional investigation into MKUltra brought many of its details to light.)

Chase’s series—also executive produced by Many Saints producer Nicole Lambert—will be based on John Lisle’s 2025 book Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, The CIA, And The Tragedy Of MKUltra. The series is actually the second show Chase has developed at HBO in recent years; he previously worked on A Ribbon Of Dreams, a miniseries set in the early days of Hollywood, but ended up walking away from the project after HBO offered him what he called “a cheesy budget” to make it.

 
Join the discussion...