Following the acclaimed World War II dramas Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are set to produce a third WWII miniseries for HBO, with The Hollywood Reporter revealing that the as-yet-untitled project “will explore the aerial wars through the eyes of enlisted men of the Eighth Air Force – known as the men of the Mighty Eighth.” The miniseries will be based upon historian Donald L. Miller’s Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, and will see Spielberg and Hanks serving as executive producers alongside Gary Goetzman.
First broadcast in 2001, Band of Brothers followed the template laid out by Spielberg with Saving Private Ryan and told the story of the men of Easy Company from D-Day preparations through to V-J Day. The miniseries featured a huge cast that included the likes of Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, David Schwimmer, Neal McDonough, Dexter Fletcher, Simon Pegg, Tom Hardy and Stephen Graham, and won six Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. It was followed in 2010 by another ten-part series, The Pacific, which followed two US marines, Eugene Sledge (Joseph Mazzello), Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) and John Basilone (Jon Seda) through the Pacific theater of World War II, and went on to surpass Band of Brothers’ awards haul with a total of eight Emmy wins.
According to THR, negotiations for this latest miniseries have been going on for several months, and now that the source material has been optioned the project will officially move into development.
Originally published January 20, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
