The cast for the George Clooney-spearheaded new adaptation of Catch-22 is still growing. Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace veteran Giancarlo Giannini is the latest addition.
Adapted from Joseph Heller's 1961 novel, Catch-22 focuses on Captain John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott), a US Air Force bombardier who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy; it is 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 the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a 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. Clooney is on to play Scheisskopf, while Hugh Laurie will take on the role of Major de Coverley, the squadron executive officer on Pianosa air base.
As for Giannini, he's Marcello, the proprietor of a brothel in Rome. He is weathered and once handsome but still debonair. He loves to challenge the young American soldiers about their patriotism, their worldview and their sense of history. David Michôd and Luke Davies wrote the scripts, with Michôd, Clooney, Grant Heslov and Ellen Kuras on to direct episodes.
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