From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Sounds worth waiting for

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117963752.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1&p=0


HBO Films has greenlit "The Pacific," a WWII miniseries from
"Band of Brothers" exec producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and
Gary Goetzman that will serve as a kind of companion piece to that earlier
project.

Production will begin in Australia this summer, with the mini to run on the
net possibly in 2009.

Spielberg, Hanks and Goetzman will serve as exec producers. HBO Films will
produce in association with Playtone and DreamWorks Television.


"The Pacific" will draw on several sources of material, including
Eugene Sledge's tome "With the Old Breed" and Robert Leckie's
"Helmet for My Pillow."

Hugh Ambrose, son of the late historian Stephen Ambrose, will serve as a
consultant on the project; Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name was the
source material for "Band of Brothers."

"The Pacific" follows the stories of the two authors, as well as
that of fellow Marine John Basilone, as they the fight against Japan across
the entire Asian theater.

Much of the mini will be shot in Melbourne, where U.S. troops were
stationed during the war.

But despite the similarities between "The Pacific" and
"Brothers," HBO Films topper Colin Callender noted that the new
project will dramatize how the Asian war "profoundly differed from the
European front. This was a different sort of war fighting a different sort
of enemy."

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5