The Pacific Miniseries

Well, I had no idea! As usual.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the guys who brought you everything ever including Band of Brothers, are teaming up again to produce HBO's The Pacific, which will do, the advertisements are suggesting, for the Pacific Theater and the island-hopping campaign what Band of Brothers did for Europe. Hans Zimmer will be doing the score, and ignoring the fact that means that it will be a rehash of the Pearl Harbor soundtrack mixed with Pirates (which isn't a problem as long as people figure it out; in defense of John Williams he comes up with new themes and leitmotifs, if not filler, unlike Mr Zimmer, who does a fine job each time regardless), this is looking like a massive production that is slated to air March 2010. More and up-to-date info can be found at Pacificfans.com.

"We are able to visit the home front on this one and we're able to show the guys before the War and after" [Tom Hanks.]

So, cool. I'm stoked. With Ingloriuous Basterrrds coming out, or however you spell it, this should be a fun run in screen releases. And yet, embarrassingly enough, I still have to see Band of Brothers. There are a few reasons that I haven't. We didn't have HBO when it originally aired, and everything time they re-air it on the History Channel, I come in halfway through, or it is out of order. And even though Virgin is going out of business, I would still have to spend much more than is feasible to buy the thing, even thought I'm ready to make the dive from hype to purchase (just at a lower price.) And finally, I am for some reason terrified of bittorents. I don't know why. It might be for the same reason that my new bazillion terabyte harddrive scares me. Whatever that reason is. ANYWAY, any familiarity with the Pacific theater campaigns suggests that this will be a pretty harrowing television experience. And that I need to get on that whole watch Band of Brothers thing.

The trailer is up for you to watch, the series being pitched as depicting the "battle that saved Australia" which I guess is technically what that whole thing started as, though it ignores the rest-- the part where they advanced towards Japan and set up airbases and stuff and like yeah, I know you all saw Letters from Iwo Jima. Anyway, hopefully they'll get the marketing right, because about the only people that direction is going to attract is Australians.

• The Pacific Trailer [youtube]

Also, this is an interesting site; it's personally maintained and has tons of photos and information, including profiles of the real players, overviews of the books that the series will be based on (as Band of Brothers was), and a wealth of information including a cool side-by-side comparison of the actors and actual figures-- the casting people got some of those pretty close!