Apple TV+ Picks Up WWII Drama ‘Masters Of The Air’ From Band Of Brothers/The Pacific Team
Apple TV+ has managed to land a major new title as it is announced ‘Masters Of The Air‘, the third instalment from the team behind ‘Band Of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’, will come to the streaming service rather than HBO as originally planned.
Based on the historian Donald L. Miller’s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, the nine-episode limited series will follow the US Eighth Air Force crewmen who fought Nazi forces during World War II. The drama is exec produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman via their company Playtone, and Steven Spielberg for Amblin Television. John Orloff and Graham Yost, who both wrote for ‘Band Of Brothers’, will be penning the script.
The series was originally being developed back at HBO as the final part of their WWII trilogy of series, following the huge success of ‘Band Of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’, which together picked up 43 Emmy nominations and 14 Emmy wins. However, the price for the new series, believed to be around the $250 million mark, seems to have put them off taking it further. Apple (who are not short on cash) stepped in, picking the series as the first to be produced by their new in-house studio, Masters, led by Apple’s Worldwide Video heads Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht.
The series will be Apple’s second collaboration with Spielberg, who is set to revive his ‘Amazing Stories’ series on the streaming service at some point in the future. Earlier this week, it was also announced that Apple had also signed a multi-year overall deal with Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, the man behind movies such as ‘Roma’ and ‘Gravity’, to make exclusive content for TV+.
For those of you wondering how to get Apple TV+, the service, which launches on 1st November 2019, will be available on the Apple TV app via iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac, and online at tv.apple.com across 100 countries and regions, including the UK. It will also be coming to select Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio smart TVs, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, although they aren’t all going to be available for the launch. The service costs £4.99 per month with a seven-day free trial, but if you happen to be in the market for one of the Apple products listed above, you get will get 12 months of Apple TV+ for free. You can see a list of the initial launch programming here.
No news yet on when ‘Masters Of The Air‘ will premiere (it could be a while…) but we’ll let you know when we hear more.
