The Pacific (miniseries)

The following actors played starring roles in multiple episodes and are split by the principal character they appear in relation to. Characters from the different plot strands do occasionally interact, while Sidney Phillips both serves with Leckie and is the best friend of Sledge.

Replica Type 95 Ha-Go light tank in the National Museum of Singapore, one of four constructed for the miniseries.[7]

The Pacific was produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman in association with HBO Miniseries, Playtone, DreamWorks, Seven Network and Sky Movies.[8][9] Seven and Sky both invested in the project for the right to broadcast it in Australia and the United Kingdom respectively.[10] Nine Network has previously broadcast the HBO productions of Band of Brothers. Nine had a broadcast deal with HBO's parent Warner Bros., but then HBO started to distribute its own productions separately.[11] In April 2007, the producers set up a production office in Melbourne and began casting.[12]

Originally the project was estimated at $100 million to produce,[11] but ended up costing over $200 million, making The Pacific the most expensive television miniseries ever created at the time.[13][14][15] According to the Sydney Morning Herald an estimated A$134 million was spent in Australia.[16] The Australian newspaper Herald Sun estimates that it brought 4,000 jobs and generated A$180 million for the Australian economy.[17]

Filming of the miniseries in Australia started on August 10, 2007,[18] and finished in late May 2008.[19] From August until November 2007[20] filming took place at locations in and around Port Douglas, Queensland including Mossman, Queensland;[21] Drumsara Plantation, Mowbray National Park[21] and beaches at Rocky Point, Queensland.[21] Production then moved to rural Victoria,[22][23] in the You Yangs near Lara (from November–December 2007),[24] then at a sand quarry on Sandy Creek Road near Geelong until February 2008.[25] Melbourne city locations were used in late 2007 and through 2008 including Central City Studios at Melbourne Docklands (March 2008);[26][27] Flinders Street (between Swanston and Elizabeth streets, February 1–4, 2008);[28][29] the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets (February 2008);[30] Flinders Street station (February 2–3, 2008).[31] Other suburban locations included Mornington Railway, Bundoora,[32] specifically the Ernest Jones Hall at the La Trobe University campus, Bundoora (late May 2008);[33] the Railway Hotel, South Melbourne (December 2007);[34] Scotch College, Melbourne (December 2007);[34] Melbourne High School (December 2007).[34][35]

The series's score was written by Hans Zimmer, Geoff Zanelli and Blake Neely and was released on March 9, 2010.[36]

Historian Hugh Ambrose, son of Band of Brothers author Stephen E. Ambrose, wrote the official tie-in book to the miniseries,[37] The Pacific: Hell was an Ocean Away (2011), which follows the stories of two of the featured men from the miniseries, Basilone and Sledge, as well as stories of Sledge's close friend Sidney Phillips and two men not featured in the series, marine officer Austin Shofner and US Navy pilot Vernon Micheel. The different cast provides a wider view of the Pacific theatre, allowing the book to include the fall of the Philippines, Midway, Philippine Sea and Luzon and expand the narrative to include depictions of life as experienced by prisoners of war, senior officers and the development of naval aviation. It was published in the UK and the US in March 2010 and Ambrose gave a webcast interview about the book at the Pritzker Military Library on April 15, 2010.[38][39]

The series premiered in the US and Canada on March 14, 2010, on HBO.[40] HBO Asia premiered The Pacific at 9 pm on April 3, 2010, with the first two episodes being consecutively broadcast in the first week. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia had dual language available. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Philippines broadcasts were available in high-definition on the HBO Asia HD Channel.[41] The Pacific began broadcast on April 5, 2010, on Sky Movies in the United Kingdom and Ireland.[42] In Portugal, the series was broadcast on April 5, 2010, on AXN and in HD on AXN HD two days after the original broadcast in the US. The series broadcast commenced in Australia on Channel 7 on Wednesday, April 14, 2010, at 8:30 pm.[43] In Denmark, Norway, Finland, France and Sweden, the series began broadcasting on Canal+; in Turkey, CNBC-e on April 18, 2010; in the Netherlands, on April 7, 2010, on Veronica; and in Greece, on Nova Cinema on April 10, 2010. In New Zealand, the series began broadcasting on April 12, 2010, on TV One. In Italy, the miniseries began broadcast on May 9, 2010, on Sky Cinema 1; in Germany, on July 15, 2010, on Kabel eins. In Japan, the miniseries started July 18, 2010 on WOWOW.[44] In South Africa, the miniseries started broadcasting on May 5, 2010, on the Mnet channel. In the US, the rights to the series were picked up by Ovation and it started airing sometime in 2019.

In 2011, HBO aired a documentary entitled He Has Seen War with Tom Hanks as executive producer and Mark Herzog as director about the postwar stories of and lasting effects of the war, including post-traumatic stress disorder, on not only 1st Marine Division members but also the members of E ("Easy") Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, who were the subjects of Band of Brothers after the company fought in Operation Overlord in Normandy (including Brécourt Manor on D-Day, followed by Carentan), in Operation Market Garden and Operation Pegasus in the Netherlands, and in the Siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge before reaching Adolf Hitler's Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest) in Berchtesgaden as Germany surrendered.

Eugene Sledge's and Robert Leckie's families both appear, as does the family of Easy Company 1st Lieutenant Lynn "Buck" Compton. Staff Sergeant William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey, both of Easy Company, also appear alongside their families.[85][86][87]

Further reading

• Masters of the Air
• Military History Magazine, Vol. 26, No. October 4/November 2009
• Franklin, Nancy (March 15, 2010). "The Critics: Hell on Earth". The New Yorker. Vol. 86, no. 4. pp. 68–70. Retrieved January 16, 2011.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Pacific (miniseries).

• The Pacific at AllMovie
• The Pacific at HBO
• The Pacific at IMDb