Hulu announced Hugh Laurie (The Night Manager, House M.D.) has signed on to a starring role in their limited series, Catch-22. The series is based on Joseph Heller’s bestselling novel of the same name, with executive producer Luke Davies and executive producer David Michod adapting the book for the series.
Hugh Laurie joins George Clooney and Christopher Abbott in the miniseries. Clooney’s directing the limited series and will executive produce along with his Smokehouse Pictures partner, Grant Heslov. Ellen Kuras is confirmed to direct two episodes and will produce. Anonymous Content’s Richard Brown and Steve Golin will be involved as executive producers.
George Clooney will play Colonel Cathcart and Hugh Laurie is set to play Major de Coverley. Major de Coverley is described as a “squadron executive officer on Pianosa air base. A noble, leonine presence, like some Civil War general, de Coverley dances to the beat of his own drum. Regarded with awe by the men. He spends his time pitching horseshoes, listening to jazz on his phonograph, mixing himself martinis, and hiring apartments for the officers in every new city the Americans take.”
The limited series will consist of six episodes.
The Plot: Catch-22 is the story of the incomparable, artful dodger, Yossarian (Christopher Abbott), a US 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 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.
 has signed on to a starring role in the limited series Catch-22 with George Clooney.){kind=link}