Band Of Brothers and The Pacific are set to have a spiritual successor after Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks secured the rights to another set of second World War tales, with HBO confirming to the Hollywood Reporter that another series is on the way.
The producing duo, who were behind both Band Of Brothers and The Pacific have gotten themselves the rights to the book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald L Miller.
The book tells the real life tale of a group of bomber pilots based in Britain who took the fight to Hilter’s Germany in the air, suffering even more casualties than the Marine Corps but proving vital in the Allies’ victory. But why does the prospect of heading back to World War II make our ears prick up?
It’s simply really. This is an area of the conflict so often overlooked.
So many films and shows focus on the men on the ground, but the terrified crews of the bombers rarely get a look in. Even when we take to the skies, it’s all about the aces in the fighter planes, not the brave men crammed into the slow and incredibly fragile bombers.
It may sound cruel to say it, but the premise alone should make for fantastic TV, full of not only the massive scale drama that the other shows had in their procession, but due to the subject, should also be claustrophobic and horrifically tense at the same time.
Band Of Brothers was one of the TV events of the decade. Bigger in scope than just about anything else ever seen on the small screen, it re-dined what a TV series could show. The budgets were also astronomically huge, the same size as most major movies. Band Of Brothers cost $125 million while The Pacific cost an even more jaw slackening $200 million.
While the latter couldn’t match the impact of its forebear, it once again showed a side of a war that is increasingly non-present in the media and walked off with more awards than any other show in 2010.
With HBO now specialising in big budget productions, we can’t think of a better time for another trip back into the grandest theatre of combat the world has ever seen and shine a light on the heroism and courage of the brave men who went into the sky is what was essentially a giant bullet magnet filled with explosives.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Tom Hanks Stephen Spielberg TV The Pacific HBO American TV