First Look at George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie in the WWII Series CATCH-22
Hulu is producing a six-part limited World War II series called Catch-22, which is based on Joseph Heller’s acclaimed novel.
George Clooney is directing and starring in the series, and today we have a few photos to share with you from the show. Those photos give us our first look at George Clooney as Scheisskopf, Kyle Chandler as Colonel Cathcart, Hugh Laurie as Major de Coverley, and more.
Here’s a description of the story that the series will tell:
Catch-22 is the story of an artful dodger, Yossarian (Christopher Abbott), a U.S. Air Force bombardier in World War II who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy, but rather his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to avoid his military assignments, he’ll be in violation of "Catch-22," a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule that specifies that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers which are real and immediate is the process of a rational mind; a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but a request to be removed from duty is evidence of sanity and therefore makes him ineligible to be relieved from duty.
Here's a little background on Chandler’s character Colonel Cathcart:
He is a group commander at a U.S. Army Air Corps base in Pianosa and is obsessed with becoming a general. As such, he does whatever it takes to please his superiors—in particular, by repeatedly raising the number of missions the men have to fly to complete a tour of duty, beyond that normally ordered by other outfits. This becomes the bane of Yossarian's life, as every time he comes close to obtaining the target number of missions for being sent home, Colonel Cathcart raises the required number again. Ironically, Cathcart himself has only flown in two missions, one of which was accidental.
When talking about why he joined the project, Chandler told EW, “My initial reaction was, ‘No, I’m not going to remake Catch-22.’ But then I read it, and immediately I was intrigued. The role is not really quite like anything I’ve done before. [Cathcart’s] insane.”
Here’s some information on Clooney’s character Scheisskopf, who is a training commander at cadet school in California:
He's ambitious, humorless, inept, angry, sadistic — and above all else, obsessed with parades and winning parade tournaments. At cadet school he makes the men’s lives a living hell. Deep down he’s just an angry idiot, so there’s no real danger he’ll ever be sent overseas. And then: he is sent overseas. As the head of operations for the entire Mediterranean Theater. And straight back into Yossarian’s life.
When talking about the story that the series will tell, producer Luke Davies says:
“It’s about the madness of war. It’s also hilariously about the madness of the bureaucracy of war, which is a different matter. And it’s about the experience of powerlessness that we all have.”
