Austin Butler (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The Dead Don’t Die) and Callum Turner (Green Room, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) will star in Apple’s Masters of the Air, a World War II drama series based on a book by Donald L. Miller, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series, like HBO’s Band of Brothers and The Pacific, will be produced by Tom Hanks’s Playtone Productions and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.
Masters of the Air tells the story of American bomber boys “who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep,” according to Variety. Butler is to play Major Gale Cleven, and Turner will play Major John Egan.
John Orloff and Graham Yost, both having written for Band of Brothers, will write and co-executive produce the series. In addition to the writers, Hanks and Spielberg, Playtone’s Gary Goetzman and Steven Shareshian and Amblin Television’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey will executive produce.
Masters of the Air was originally supposed to join Band of Brothers and The Pacific in HBO’s catalog, but the deal failed, so Apple picked it up, according to Deadline.
Butler is also starring in Elvis, an upcoming biopic about Elvis Presley from Baz Luhrmann, alongside Hanks. Butler stars as Presley, and Hanks plays Colonel Tom Parker.
Hanks has already wrote, starred in, and produced another World War II film in 2020 for Apple called Greyhound.