Production Begins on New Spielberg, Hanks HBO Mini-Series

LOS
ANGELES, August 17: Production has begun in Australia
on The Pacific, a new 10-hour HBO
mini-series on U.S. marines in the Pacific during World War II that will be
executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven
Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the creative team behind the Emmy-winning 2001
HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.

The Pacific is scheduled to debut on HBO in 2009. Seven
Network holds the exclusive broadcast rights in Australia. The mini-series is
produced by HBO Films in association with Playtone and DreamWorks Television.
Production is based at Melbourne Central City Studios in Melbourne, Victoria,
with filming taking place in and around Melbourne—where U.S. troops
camped in 1943—and multiple locations in Far North Queensland. Kary
Antholis, the senior VP of HBO Films, is the executive in charge of the
project.

The Pacific is based on the books With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge, and
Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie, as well as original interviews
conducted by the filmmakers. Hugh Ambrose, son of historian Stephen E. Ambrose
(author of Band of Brothers), serves as a consultant on the mini-series. It tracks the intertwined odysseys
of three U.S. Marines—Robert Leckie, (played by James Badge Dale), Eugene
Sledge (played by Joe Mazzello) and John Basilone (played by Jon Seda), across
the vast canvas of the Pacific. The experiences of these men and their fellow
Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles
of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain forests of Cape Gloucester,
across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of
Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy,
return home after V-J Day.