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

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.