Mike Fleming Jr. for Deadline:
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Tom Hanks & Gary Goetzman’s Playtone have made a deal with Apple for an event limited series based on the Donald L. Miller book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought The Air War Against Nazi Germany. It is a followup to their Emmy-winning WWII HBO miniseries Band Of Brothers and The Pacific.
The book tells the story of the American bomber boys in WWII who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. It becomes the first series greenlit with Apple serving as the studio. Deadline hears that the miniseries will be more than eight hours in length, and that it will cost well north of $200 million to produce…
Masters of the Air will stream exclusively on Apple TV+, and it becomes the second project there for Spielberg after the anthology series Amazing Stories.
MacDailyNews Take: Instant awards-contender!
Those who can wrap their heads around Apple’s massive cash mountain and the company’s unparalleled ability to generate cash can clearly see who the winner will be. The most talented producers, writers, directors, editors, actors, etc. are attracted to exactly what Apple has and makes in vast abundance: Cash. The king.
Like bears to honey, it’s happening already. – MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018
Apple has the money required to catch up and even surpass all competitors very quickly and they can accomplish it without buying a studio or even production companies. — MacDailyNews, April 3, 2018
I love the idea of well-funded documentaries that capture history in a way that will be accessible and compelling to current and future generations. Apple is one of the companies that can afford to fund such a high-end effort – an 8-hour documentary with the budget of a blockbuster movie.
I hope that investments like this lead to substantial growth in Apple TV+ and to revenue streams that will fund additional independent content. Even Apple cannot afford to bankroll a series of $200M productions without some return on investment.
Low margin waste, it won’t move the needle. Content for Apple is a distraction they don’t need.
This combination — Spielberg, Hanks, and Goetzman — bodes extremely well for a serious miniseries looking at the people underlying the story.
What they did for Band of Brothers and The Pacific was so humanizing and different than the typical top-down approach to WWII films (which are also important, but those are truly numerous). The downside is that after so many decades, there are very few of the actual participants yet alive to feed their artistry and enliven the history they give us. Amazing gifts from this collaboration.
Here’s to the Greatest Generation!
~~Jazzbo
Who cares!