Inside the making of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Masters of the Air’

“Masters of the Air,” Apple TV+’s World War II miniseries, has been a labor of love in every conceivable way.

“Masters of the Air,” Apple TV+’s World War II miniseries, has been a labor of love in every conceivable way.

Even backed by Hollywood heavyweights Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, who previously worked on HBO’s World War II miniseries “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” the scale of the project proved to be the biggest challenge — particularly how to bring the air war to life in a convincing way. And it took more than a decade and a change in network backing to get this project onto TV screens.

Edward Ashley, Matt Gavan, Callum Turner and Anthony Boyle in "Masters of the Air," now streaming on Apple TV+.Robert Viglasky / Courtesy of Apple “Ten years ago, the technology wasn’t there,” Goetzman said in a recent interview with NBC News. “And we really needed the technology to be there for us to simulate all of these planes in the air doing these very dramatic sequences.”

The show, which stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Nate Mann, Anthony Boyle and Barry Keoghan, tells the real-life stories of the men who served in the 8th Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group over Nazi-occupied Europe from 1943 to 1945. The group eventually earned the nickname “The Bloody Hundredth” for the grave losses it suffered.

The show's predecessors "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" tell the stories of the Army and Marines respectively.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/making-tom-hanks-steven-spielbergs-masters-air-rcna138815

---