Peter Berg is bringing one of World War II’s most improbable true stories to the big screen, and now it has a date.
“The Mosquito Bowl,” directed by Berg (“Lone Survivor,” “Deepwater Horizon”), will open in U.S. theaters Oct. 30 before making its Netflix premiere Nov. 25, Variety can exclusively reveal, along with a first BTS image. The film will play in select AMC theaters during its theatrical run, along with additional locations across the country. It’s one of the few Netflix and AMC notable partnerships that has occurred, and the first since the release of the animated juggernaut “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Based on the instant New York Times bestseller “The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II” by Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars who set their fame aside to enlist in the Marines following the attack on Pearl Harbor. As they prepare for the brutal invasion of Okinawa, they play in a legendary game featuring some of the greatest players in college football history — a contest that, for many, would be the last they ever played. Berg produces through his Film 44 banner alongside Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment and Alex Gayner, with Ezra Emanuel, Bissinger and Jeb Brody serving as executive producers.
Nicholas Galitzine leads the ensemble as John McLaughry, with Bill Skarsgård as Bob Baumann, Ray Nicholson as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis as David Schreiner. Berg and Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant,” “Twisters”) wrote the screenplay.
Berg also makes an appearance on-screen as Gen. Buckner, heading a deep supporting cast that includes Brent Comer, Dominic Bogart, Jack Ingram, Ella Newton, Lola Bond, Stacy Clausen and Billy Smith. The film’s USO interludes feature Blake Erickson as Bob Hope, Claudia Ware as Frances Langford and Steven Sammut as Jerry Colonna, while sports personality Pat McAfee appears as a drill instructor.
The artisans team includes cinematographer Jacques Jouffret; editors Jon Otazua and Garret Donnelly as editors; Rachel Tenner as casting director; and nine-time Academy Award-nominated sound designer Wylie Stateman, whose credits include “Lone Survivor,” “Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood” and “Inglourious Basterds.”
“The Mosquito Bowl” also reunites Berg with his “Friday Night Lights” collaborators Bissinger and composers Explosions in the Sky. Their score gives the film its aching pulse.
Berg has long been one of Hollywood’s most reliable chroniclers of American courage under fire, and “The Mosquito Bowl” arrives as awards season gets ready to heat up with the start of the fall festivals. Every cycle seems to produce a film that wants to speak directly to Middle America — the way “American Sniper” and “The Blind Side” once did. This one carries the same ambition.
A moving drama that opens on a Herbert Hoover quote and builds toward the question: When is the moment a man changes during war? Think “Saving Private Ryan” by way of “Remember the Titans” — a film that wants audiences to confront sacrifice, masculinity and a disappearing piece of American culture on their way out of the theater. Nicholson and Francis are standouts, we hear, while Jouffret’s cinematography and Stateman’s sound design are said to be nothing short of invigorating. For all his box-office muscle, Berg remains an underrated filmmaker — a truth that “Deepwater Horizon,” “Lone Survivor” and “Patriots Day” have proved for years.
The guy knows how to make a movie.
