George Clooney is returning to the small screen, the medium that had launched his acting career.
The Oscar winner and Emmy nominee for his time on ER will star and direct a limited series based on the seminal Joseph Heller novel Catch-22.
The six-episode series, produced by Paramount TV and Anonymous Content, does not yet have a network. Co-written by Luke Davies (Lion) and David Michod (War Machine), the project will be shopped in December.
Starring Clooney, it’s expected to land at a deep-pocketed outlet.
Catch-22 — originally adapted into a feature film in 1970 from Paramount Pictures and directed by Mike Nichols and starring Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin and Bob Newhart.
The film is considered to be a major artistic and commercial flop for Nichols, after making a splashy impression with The Graduate in 1967.
Richard Dreyfuss later starred in an ABC half-hour pilot produced by Paramount TV in 1973 that never went forward.
Set in Italy during World War II, Catch 22 tells the story of Yossarian, a U.S. Air Force bombardier trying to fulfill his service requirements so he can go home.
The novel explored the paradox of requirements where airmen who felt mentally unfit to fly were not obligated to do so, but anyone who applied to stop flying was sane enough to fly, creating the catch-22 of its title.
