https://www.engadget.com/2019/...e-air-apple-tv-plus/

quote:

After trying to adapt 'Masters of the Air' with HBO, Steven Spielberg turns to Apple for help.

Just one day after signing Alfonso Cuarón to a multi-year deal, Apple has scored another coup for its upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service. Variety reports the company will produce Masters of the Air, the follow-up to 2001's Band of Brothers and 2010's The Pacific. Both Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who helped create the two World War II series, will serve as executive producers on the new show.

This time around, the source material comes from historian Donald Miller's book of the same name. Masters of the Air documents the contributions of airmen from the 8th Air Force during World War II. The 8th Air Force was the largest of the air components the US army deployed in western Europe. It took part in both the invasion of Normandy and the bombing of Dresden. Spielberg and Hanks had been trying to adapt Masters of the Air with HBO since at least 2013. According to Variety, John Orloff, who worked on Band of Brothers (he penned the series' emotional "Why We Fight" episode) is writing the script for Masters of the Air.

Notably, after House of Cards, this marks the second major series HBO has lost to one of its streaming competitors, though this one comes as less of a surprise since Apple and Spielberg were already working together on Amazing Stories. Apple TV+ will launch on November 1st with a $4.99 per month price tag.

I'm surprised HBO didn't want this bad enough after they did The Cold Blue.

I’m not surprised HBO didn’t swoop it considering what seems to me an ever increasing leftward slant.

As ex USAF during the closing days of Vietnam and the Cold War, I could see the legacy of the WWII 8th AF every day.
I am very interested in this series.

I've been reading about that for years (article in OP says 2013), I hope it gets going this time.

A few years ago there was a sort of trailer with cheap CGI, I'm confident the final product will be MUCH better. From 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBy_FIlcOJs

This has been on hold for way too long.

"The series is slated to run as an in-house, Apple-exclusive on the tech behemoth’s streaming service, Apple TV+."

Complete article:

https://www.militarytimes.com/...-inks-star-director/

Upcoming WWII series from Steven Spielberg & Tom Hanks inks star director

J.D. Simkins and Claire Barrett
6 hours ago

After last year’s confirmation that the follow-up to the wildly successful World War II series, “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” was officially on the way, studio heads for “Masters of the Air” announced the addition of a star director to helm the project.

Cary Joji Fukunaga, the Emmy award-winning director behind the masterful first season of HBO’s “True Detective,” has signed on to direct the first three episodes of the 10-part series. Fukunaga is also at the helm of the upcoming James Bond Film, “No Time to Die,” which recently confirmed a release delay until April 2021 due to COVID-19.

Based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, “Masters of the Air” is expected to follow American bomber pilots of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, who, on a daily basis, risked flying at 25,000 feet in frigid temperatures — in broad daylight — to bring the fight to Hitler’s doorstep.

Three years (1942-1945) of death-defying bombing runs by the Eighth’s Flying Fortresses over cities like Berlin, Dresden and Hanover were, for much of the war, the only battles Allied forces waged inside the territorial borders of Nazi Germany.

The Eighth’s effort to pry Europe from the claws of the Third Reich — one that included unleashing 697,000 tons of bombs — proved to be overwhelmingly costly. By war’s end, over 47,000 of the 115,000 U.S. Army Air Force casualties were from the Eighth.

“The Eighth Air Force was one of the great fighting forces in the history of warfare,” famed war correspondent Andy Rooney once wrote.

“It had the best equipment and the best men, all but a handful of whom were civilian Americans, educated and willing to fight for their country and a cause they understood was in danger — freedom. It’s what made World War II special.”

In the summer of 1943, Oscar-winning director William Wyler (“Ben-Hur”) and a film crew embedded with men from the Eighth to film air combat missions aboard Boeing B-17s. The footage Wyler’s group captured would eventually become the 1944 World War II documentary, “The Memphis Belle: A story of a Flying Fortress.”

One of Wyler’s own camera crew, Harold Tannenbaum, was killed during the filming process.

More recently, director Erik Nelson resurrected Wyler’s footage for the documentary “The Cold Blue,” a film dedicated to the heroic actions of the men of the “Mighty Eighth,” who stared down death each time they climbed into their cockpits and bombardier enclosures and took to the sky.

The Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group, or the “Bloody 100th,” are likely to be the miniseries’ featured bomber group, according to Footsteps Research .

The men of the Bloody 100th earned their moniker the hard way. Flak-filled skies over Germany were so deadly that the odds of surviving the 25 missions required to complete a full tour were only one in four.

One former pilot of a 100th Bomb Group Flying Fortress went so far as to compare the ever-present threat of flak to Russian roulette.

“You were going to be hit by it,” John “Lucky” Luckadoo, now 98, told Military Times. “It was just a matter of where it would hit you and when.”

Reuniting with Spielberg and Hanks on the aviation-centered series is “Band of Brothers” writer John Orloff, who also served as a consultant on “The Pacific.” The series is slated to run as an in-house, Apple-exclusive on the tech behemoth’s streaming service, Apple TV+.

The development of the miniseries, which includes production costs that could exceed $200 million, was originally confirmed by HBO in January 2013, but delays and budget considerations led to the project being dropped, according to a statement from the network.

The trilogy’s first two installments, “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” earned over 40 Emmy nominations and took 14 awards home.

First let me say, my dad flew with the 8th, with Jimmy Stewart's group for a while, and I hope they do a good job with the series.

That said, I may be missing something, but how are three miniseries done by different directors, using different actors with no character overlap, based on books by different authors on different topics somehow a 'trilogy'?

Not saying the other two weren't very good (they were) ...and not saying the marketing department for the third wouldn't love for a new show to be thought of as somehow related to two award-winning miniseries....but, personally, I'm not seeing the connection.

Am I missing something fundamental, or are they?

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
First let me say, my dad flew with the 8th, with Jimmy Stewart's group for a while, and I hope they do a good job with the series.

That said, I may be missing something, but how are three miniseries done by different directors, using different actors with no character overlap, based on books by different authors on different topics somehow a 'trilogy'?

Not saying the other two weren't very good (they were) ...and not saying the marketing department for the third wouldn't love for a new show to be thought of as somehow related to two award-winning miniseries....but, personally, I'm not seeing the connection.

Am I missing something fundamental, or are they?

Same producers (Hanks and Spielberg) that are on the same page in terms of how this production is presented.

Same war, different services, same producers.
Hopefully it's as good as the other two.

While I'm bummed its yet another WWII series in the European theater, I'm pleased that its coming from the Spielberg/Hanks duo, as they largely have a knack for doing this genre and period right.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
While I'm bummed its yet another WWII series in the European theater, I'm pleased that its coming from the Spielberg/Hanks duo, as they largely have a knack for doing this genre and period right.

I'm totally in for this one, but at the same time....It's like they've never heard of Torch or Anzio. I realize they did the Pacific, but it's annoying they are so micro focused on what are (for lack of a better term) the "famous" parts/units of the war.

They could do a whole series on Guadalcanal/Tulagi alone. The USMCs invasion, Edson's Raiders and the US Navy makes for a good series I think.

WW2 has an almost endless supply of interesting stories. That's why so many movies and shows have been made on the subject. It only involved the US directly as a combatant for 3 1/2 years.
There were a lot of under reported stories because they didn't adapt to the big screen well.
The Merchant Marine, the highest casualty rate of any service (1 of 26 dead).
North Africa, New Guinea, China, the Aleutians,
The Russian Front, (tremendous casualties on both sides).
Each of these series has taken a tremendous budget and a lot of time to produce the end product.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
WW2 has an almost endless supply of interesting stories. That's why so many movies and shows have been made on the subject. It only involved the US directly as a combatant for 3 1/2 years.
There were a lot of under reported stories because they didn't adapt to the big screen well.
The Merchant Marine, the highest casualty rate of any service (1 of 26 dead).
North Africa, New Guinea, China, the Aleutians,
The Russian Front, (tremendous casualties on both sides).
Each of these series has taken a tremendous budget and a lot of time to produce the end product.

I think to a degree, many of these stories can be told, as technology has allowed movie makers to film certain scenes and develop the settings necessary to tell the story. There's no shortage of books, memoirs and historical documentation to draw from. I do get it, that getting such productions is a massive undertaking requiring not only convincing of power brokers and financing but, putting together a functional screenplay, gathering the resources and locations...its big.

Personally, I'd like to see more about the Pacific, the South-East Asian Theater is largely forgotten. Thailand was allies with Japan , the Brits suffered in Malaya-Burma like the US troops suffered in the Philippines, Churchill lost his shit with Percival. Movies about the Flying Tigers and Merril's Maruaders are several generations old, like really old now...how many movies have featured D-Day, Okinawa was just as big. I don't think there's been any movies about flying The Hump or, the US B-29's that were based in China.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
WW2 has an almost endless supply of interesting stories. That's why so many movies and shows have been made on the subject. It only involved the US directly as a combatant for 3 1/2 years.
There were a lot of under reported stories because they didn't adapt to the big screen well.
...
The Russian Front, (tremendous casualties on both sides).

It's only US/English cinema that is lacking Eastern Front content.

If you branch out into foreign cinema, there are a lot of German, Russian, Polish, and Finnish movies and TV miniseries about the Eastern Front, much of which is as good or better than US/Western WW2 movies/TV.

Amazon Prime and Netflix have some of the German/Russian WW2 content available for streaming. Some of the older German films about WW2 have fallen into the public domain and are available on Youtube, like "Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben" and "Die Brücke". The rest, including most of the Finnish stuff (which tends to be excellent), is somewhat tougher to source.

Good starting points are 1993's "Stalingrad" in German, 1989's "Talvisota" in Finnish, and the German miniseries "Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter/Generation War".

Nazis are the easiest bad guys to write a movie about. Especially for heavily-Jewish Hollywood (Spielberg.) They are probably the last "group" that can be universally agreed upon as being evil and nobody cares about "offending" modern-day Germans (white euros) by depicting their atrocities.

Some have done a great job of not painting all Germans with that broad brush but they know if they slip up, they don't have to worry about a big backlash that they might get from Asians. And on the Eastern front, they'd have to paint somebody as the good guys... either Nazi Germany or Russia, and neither of those are good options. (FWIW, Enemy at the Gate was a solid war movie.)

Sorry if that was pseudo-political. It's just my reasoning for why Hollywood obsesses over the western European Theater.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
WW2 has an almost endless supply of interesting stories. That's why so many movies and shows have been made on the subject. It only involved the US directly as a combatant for 3 1/2 years.
There were a lot of under reported stories because they didn't adapt to the big screen well.
...
The Russian Front, (tremendous casualties on both sides).

It's only US/English cinema that is lacking Eastern Front content.

If you branch out into foreign cinema, there are a lot of German, Russian, Polish, and Finnish movies and TV miniseries about the Eastern Front, much of which is as good or better than US/Western WW2 movies/TV.

Amazon Prime and Netflix have some of the German/Russian WW2 content available for streaming. Some of the older German films about WW2 have fallen into the public domain and are available on Youtube, like "Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben" and "Die Brücke". The rest, including most of the Finnish stuff (which tends to be excellent), is somewhat tougher to source.

Good starting points are 1993's "Stalingrad" in German, 1989's "Talvisota" in Finnish, and the German miniseries "Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter/Generation War".

there is a guy that sets up at the gunshows in NOVA, not sure where he is based out of,

he has a very large inventory of war movies and related history shows,

he usually has close to a dozen if not more TV's set up w/ each playing a different movie,


he does have the 'common' stuff you may see on HBO etc, but also a schload of stuff from Europe,

some look a bit cheesy, but most I have seen bits and pieces off look well made,

I have started taking pics of the DVD cases and later googling to see if they are available,

I have a friend coming in town next week, we will dial up T34 on Amazon and watch it, it looks well made

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
It's only US/English cinema that is lacking Eastern Front content.

If you branch out into foreign cinema, there are a lot of German, Russian, Polish, and Finnish movies and TV miniseries about the Eastern Front, much of which is as good or better than US/Western WW2 movies/TV.

There's a Russian film Come and See made in the 80's, which is incredibly impactful and graphic. It really drives home the depravity and ugliness that war wrought on the Russians. Its been hailed by some to be the greatest war film ever produced, it was banned by the Soviet Union for a bit, because it was so graphic they thought it was gratuitous.

The first two, Band of Brothers & Pacific, didn't have too many politically correct revisions that I could see. Terms to describe the Japanese are easy to understand for me as my father spent almost two years in the Pacific. Still, I wonder if they could have used those words in today's hypersensitive environment.
I hope that will continue in this one. Ten or twenty years ago (when those were made) seems like an eternity now.
I guess anyone that is really interested in the subject has to start reading again. Producing these is such a large and expensive undertaking that only something that has mass audience appeal can get the necessary backing to make it happen. There is a tremendous body of work out there of incredible quality, in print.
World War 1 had a small fraction of the attention during my lifetime compared to WW2, but as I have started to learn more, it is such a landmark event plus many events that happened around that time. Understanding that era really explains a lot of what has happened since and is still happening in the world.
Unfortunately very few know much or anything about that.

https://www.militarytimes.com/...-started-production/

New WWII series from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks has finally started production

J.D. Simkins and Claire Barrett
Seven hours ago

WWII aficionados around the world can finally let out a yelp of excitement.

“Masters of the Air,” the third installment of the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks-led trilogy that includes “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” has officially begun filming, according to an Instagram post from director Cary Fukunaga.

Fukunaga, the Emmy award-winning director behind the masterful first season of HBO’s “True Detective,” is signed on to direct the first three episodes of the 10-part series.

The development of the miniseries, which includes production costs that could exceed $200 million, was originally confirmed by HBO in January 2013, but delays and budget considerations led to the project being dropped, according to a statement from the network. Announced as an Apple TV+ production over 18 months ago, the filming was once again delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, “Masters of the Air” is expected to follow American bomber pilots of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, who, on a daily basis, risked flying at 25,000 feet in frigid temperatures — in broad daylight — to bring the fight to Hitler’s doorstep.

Three years — from 1942 to 1945 — of death-defying bombing runs by the Eighth’s Flying Fortresses over cities like Berlin, Dresden and Hanover were, for much of the war, the only battles Allied forces waged inside the territorial borders of Nazi Germany.

The Eighth’s effort to pry Europe from the claws of the Third Reich — one that included unleashing 697,000 tons of bombs — proved to be overwhelmingly costly. By war’s end, over 47,000 of the 115,000 U.S. Army Air Force casualties were from the Eighth.

“The Eighth Air Force was one of the great fighting forces in the history of warfare,” famed war correspondent Andy Rooney once wrote.

“It had the best equipment and the best men, all but a handful of whom were civilian Americans, educated and willing to fight for their country and a cause they understood was in danger — freedom. It’s what made World War II special.”

Reuniting with Spielberg and Hanks on the aviation-centered series is “Band of Brothers” writer John Orloff, who also served as a consultant on “The Pacific.”

Orloff tweeted out the good news today.

The production is codenamed “Whirlwind,” not unlike the whirlwind of excitement Fukunaga’s post has generated.

So, to history and cinephile fans alike, rejoice! It’s finally happening.

I just hope they don't try to apply a 'woke' mentality to the series.

This *COULD* be an outstanding series. It could also be a steaming pile of horse apples, and we may actually be better off had they never made it. Only time will tell.

Still, I'm not too confident in Hollywood's ability to make a decent war movie. Band of Brothers is one of the very few WWII movies/series made in the last 30 years that I actually enjoy. So many others lack the proper historical context (I HATED Saving Private Ryan, U-571, Red Tails, Pearl Harbor, the new Midway movie,...). The movies I do like in this time frame include the 1990's Tuskegee Airmen, and We Were Soldiers (though the movie's ending was PURE fiction, since in real life, the US did NOT win such a clear-cut victory as portrayed in the movie). I honestly cannot think of any others I enjoyed (though, I haven't seen Greyhound yet).

I'm a History major, with a concentration on WWII. I suspect I know too much to truly enjoy the series.

I sincerely hope my pessimism is misplace, though. I have the book this is based on, though I haven't had a chance to read it yet.