Updated

Updated · Deadline · Jul 8

David Chase Admits Mistake in 2021 'Many Saints' Character Portrayal as HBO Develops MKUltra Series

Updated

Updated · Deadline · Jul 8

David Chase Admits Mistake in 2021 'Many Saints' Character Portrayal as HBO Develops MKUltra Series

Q: How will David Chase's spiritual LSD use inform his series on the CIA's weaponization of the drug?

David Chase’s own LSD experiences are likely to shape *Project: MKUltra* by giving it a strong sense of irony and a deeper focus on consciousness, not just espionage. Chase has said he took LSD “eight or nine times” when he was younger and came away seeing it as a “spiritual experience” that changed his life and suggested “other levels of existence.” That perspective appears central to why he finds MKUltra so compelling. He has said he was struck by the fact that the U.S. government tried to turn LSD into a weapon, while he sees it as something fundamentally unsuited to that purpose. In his view, the CIA’s effort was not only abusive and destructive but also misguided at a basic level: they tried to militarize a drug he associates with spiritual transformation. As a result, the series will likely emphasize the contrast between LSD’s subjective, mind-expanding effects and the CIA’s attempt to use it for control, coercion and manipulation. That gives Chase a personal lens through which to dramatize the moral absurdity of MKUltra and the damage it caused. His comments also suggest the project may go beyond a conventional historical thriller. Chase has indicated that the material is, in part, “about consciousness,” which points to a treatment that explores both the inner experience of psychedelics and the ethical collapse of those who tried to weaponize them.

3 articles · Updated · Deadline · Jul 8

David Chase told the Karlovy Vary Film Festival that The Many Saints of Newark mishandled Dickie Moltisanti, saying the 2021 prequel forgot traits long established in The Sopranos — drug addiction, alcoholism and instability.
Chase said he and the filmmakers avoided making Dickie too similar to Tony Soprano, and that the origins-story angle ultimately took over a project he had not originally envisioned as a straightforward prequel.
HBO is now developing Chase's first series since The Sopranos, Project: MKUltra, based on John Lisle's nonfiction book about CIA mind-control experiments in the 1950s and 1960s.
Chase said he has been writing an MKUltra feature for five years and is also adapting the material as a series after HBO executives Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi quickly backed the idea.