46 | JUNE 2 • 2022 

ARTS&LIFE
FILM

A

t the age of 12, Jewish filmmaker 
Michael Chait, who grew up in the 
West Bloomfield and Bloomfield 
Hills area, wanted to be an actor. Other days, 
he wanted to be a pilot like his father. “I grew 
up with movies and I always liked aviation,
” 
Chait, 37, says.
Yet everything changed when Chait saw 
The Rock, a 1996 film directed by Michael 
Bay. “Something just snapped in my head,
” 
recalls Chait, who to this day is impressed by 
the film’s camera work and directing style. “I 
was like, ‘Oh, this is what you want to do.
’”
Now set to release World War II action 
film Wolf Hound, his directorial feature debut, 
on June 3 through Lionsgate’s Grindstone 
Entertainment, Chait, who currently lives 
in West Bloomfield after 11 years living in 
Chicago, is still inspired by the films of his 
childhood.
“I realized how much directing really 
tells the story even more than the script 
sometimes,
” he says of watching The Rock. “It 
totally changes how an audience experiences 
a film.
”
Having poured his blood, sweat and tears 
into Wolf Hound — his self-described process 
— Chait wants viewers to have that same 
experience as he had watching The Rock.

A CHANCE EXPERIENCE
As a 2006 graduate of Columbia College 

Chicago, where he met his best friends (and 
later crew members for Wolf Hound), Chait is 
no stranger to the filmmaking world.
He worked on films all through high 
school and was later selected by Steven 
Spielberg and Mark Burnett as one of the 
final top 50 directors out of 12,000 filmmak-
ers for the premiere episode of Fox’s On The 
Lot (2007).
Prior to embarking on Wolf Hound, Chait 
was directing commercials and music videos 
for 15 years. In 2010 and 2012, he tried to 
get two other feature films going, but nei-
ther worked out. Then, in 2013, inspiration 
struck at an unlikely place.
He was directing a commercial for the 
Yankee Air Museum at Willow Run Airport 
in Ypsilanti, which advertised taking rides in 
a restored B-17 bomber. Chait was familiar 
with the plane, but never spent much time 
with it. “When I stepped onto it, it was like a 
movie moment,
” he recalls. “I put my foot in 
the door and a rush of emotion hit me.
”
On the same plane many decades back, 
Chait envisioned 18- and 19-year-old kids 
standing in the exact spot during World 
War II, fighting the Nazis and fighting for 
freedom.
“I thought, ‘I have to do this justice,
’” he 
remembers.
Doing justice, however, was for a commer-
cial only, but Chait knew deep down that the 

90-second creation could be an entire movie. 
With only nine B-17 bombers left in the 
entire world, Chait had a unique slice of his-
tory to work with that had been seldom told.

BUILDING A STORYLINE
Yet Chait didn’t know how unique that 
history truly was until his writing partner, 
Timothy Ritchey, discovered a story on 
Wikipedia about a German Luftwaffe squad-
ron called KG 200 that neither had heard of.
“They were a special forces group that 
forced down American and British planes 
and captured their crews,
” Chait explains. 
“They were very mysterious and there was 
hardly any information on them.
”
Pursuing the story further, Chait won-
dered if they could create a fictional version 
inspired by the truth. While the German 
squadron was ultimately unsuccessful, what 
if their success had changed the course of 
the war? And what if the hero was a Jewish-
American fighter pilot? It seemed to work 
perfectly.
“
All the dots were connecting,
” Chait says 
of Wolf Hound. “This is the movie we had to 
make.
”
It was the ultimate story, and one that 
Chait and Ritchey began to bring to life and 
film in 2018. 
“It was fighting the greatest evil, the 
Nazis,
” Chait explains. “I was passionate 

New release by Metro 
Detroit filmmaker 
tells untold story of 
World War II.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Wolf 
Hound

Michael B. 
Chait

COURTESY OF MICHAEL CHAIT

