HBO has set a March 8 premiere for Rooster, a 10-episode campus comedy starring Steve Carell, with new installments rolling out weekly through May 10. The series launches at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will stream on HBO Max, the network said in a release announcing the date and schedule.
The first trailer frames Carell as Greg Russo, a successful fiction author who arrives at an elite college expecting a short visit and finds himself pulled into his daughter’s crisis. Katie, played by Charly Clive, teaches at the school and faces professional fallout after, according to dialogue in the clip, she burned down a faculty house and assaulted a professor. Greg decides to stay and help, then runs into a harder truth: he can’t bulldoze this problem the way he wants.
The show leans into a second pressure point: Greg’s public persona. Students recognize him as “Rooster,” a nickname tied to a popular character from his books, and they treat his presence like an event. The trailer plays that attention for comedy—Greg resists the label, then gets swept up by campus energy and the temptations of feeling admired again.
Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses serve as co-showrunners and executive producers, bringing another collaboration after Scrubs and following Lawrence’s recent run on Ted Lasso. Warner Bros. Television produces. The ensemble includes Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley and Lauren Tsai, positioning the series as a mix of generational friction, academic absurdity, and a midlife ego check played in real time.
