ON A WING AND A PRAYER

After tackling the US WW2 effort on land and sea with Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg turn skywards to explore the experience of the airborne 'Bloody 100th' with another zeitgeist cast.

- JANE CROWTHER

MASTERS OF THE AIR exec producer Gary Goetzman and his bomber boys Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle and Nate Mann tell Total Film about the training and teamwork that went into saluting real-life aviation heroes and creating must-see TV. At ease, gentlemen...

Focusing on the key campaigns of the US air force during WW2 was something exec producer Gary Goetzman and his partners, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, ‘had always talked about’ in the wake of their hit shows Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010) – both multi-strand series that made stars of their casts and set high benchmarks for epic TV. Though we march chronologically further away from the events of WW2 with each passing year, the fascination with the era continues. And the overarching story at the heart of a wartime drama remains eternal. ‘It’s a very simple concept,’ Goetzman tells Total Film at the end of a long production that began with filming in the UK in 2021. ‘We’ve got a dictator who wants to rule the world, and a whole bunch of people who want to protect democracy and make sure that he’s not successful. It’s the kind of story that we love anyway – and it’s true. So I think it always fascinates people when they know who they’re rooting for, and the goals are defined.’