April 4 (UPI) — “House” and “The Night Manager” actor Hugh Laurie signed on to play Major de Coverley in “Catch-22,” Hulu’s limited series featuring George Clooney as Colonel Cathcart.
Clooney is directing and producing the six-part adaptation of Joseph Heller’s novel with longtime creative partner Grant Heslov.
Christopher Abbott will play the central character Yossarian, “an incomparable, artful dodger” and “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,” a news release said.
“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 which 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.”
