Things are changing, if only very slightly, for George Clooney's planned new adaptation of Catch-22. Kyle Chandler is joining the cast, and he'll be inheriting the role of Colonel Cathart from Clooney.
This is not to say that Clooney is leaving the project – far from it; he's still directing (alongside Ellen Kuras and David Michôd) and producing the miniseries, and will move into the smaller supporting role of Scheisskopf to free up more time.
Adapted from Joseph Heller's 1961 novel (originally turned into a film by Mike Nichols in 1970), 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.
In addition to Abbott, Hugh Laurie is aboard as Major de Coverley, the squadron executive officer on Pianosa air base where Yossarian is based. Chandler will next be seen in First Man and Godzilla: King Of The Monsters.
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