Spielberg & Hanks Continue to Chronicle WWII

Band of Brothers is a 2001 American war drama miniseries based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's 1992 non-fiction book of the same title. The series was created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who served, also, as executive producers. Previously, Spielberg and Hanks collaborated—very successfully—on the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan.

Band of Brothers, which debuted on HBO in September 2021, dramatizes the history of "Easy" Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s famed 101st Airborne Division. The series follows a group of paratroopers from jump-training in the United States through major actions in the Second World War’s European Theater, culminating in Japan’s unconditional surrender and the cessation of hostilities between the Allied and Axis powers.

Band of Brothers’s critical and commercial success compelled Spielberg and Hanks to create The Pacific, a 2010 Band of Brothers companion-piece that chronicles the United States Marine Corps's actions in the Second World War’s Pacific Theater.

Comes now 2023, and news of the upcoming release of Spielberg’s and Hanks’s much-anticipated Masters of the Air, a nine-episode follow-up series to Band of Brothers and The Pacific—the first two episodes of which are to premier on Apple TV+ on Friday, 26 January 2024. Thereafter, episodes will air every Friday through 15 March.

Masters of the Air derives of Donald L. Miller’s biography Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. The series relates the actions of enlisted men serving in the U.S. Eighth Air Force during the Second World War and the brutal realities with which they contended during the bloody and protracted Allied bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.

Masters of the Air’s ensemble cast comprises Austin Butler (Elvis), Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts), Anthony Boyle (The Plot Against America), Nate Mann, and Raff Law. John Orloff, who worked on Band of Brothers, adapted the screenplay in collaboration with Graham Yost (Justified, The Americans).

Masters of the Air will stream exclusively on Apple TV+, which reportedly committed upwards of $250-million to the series’ production.

FMI: https://amblin.com/tv/masters-of-the-air