Filmmaker Peter Berg's latest project, "The Mosquito Bowl," draws on a real football game played during World War II, and it extends themes that have run through his work for years. The Netflix film is based on Buzz Bissinger's 2022 nonfiction book, "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II," and it premiered at AFI FEST before its theatrical release.
A game played between invasions
The film centers on a football game played on Guadalcanal in 1944, with some of America's best college players among the participants. Many of them had given up promising sports careers to enlist in the Marines after Pearl Harbor. The invasion of Okinawa was approaching, and the game offered a brief break from the fighting. For some of the players, it would be their last.
The cast and creative team
Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis lead the cast as four of the college players. Berg co-wrote the screenplay with Mark L. Smith, who also wrote the series "American Primeval." Brian Grazer and Alex Gartner produce alongside the director. The post-rock band Explosions in the Sky provides the score, reuniting with Berg after their work on "Friday Night Lights."
A different view of war
Berg has directed many films about soldiers and combat, but he has said he does not see this one as a simple tribute to war. In a recent interview with Netflix's Tudum, he described the film as an effort to honor those who fought, to mourn those who did not return, and to show the real cost of war. Readers should weigh that framing as the director's own stated intent rather than an independent judgment of the film.
Release plans and what comes next
"The Mosquito Bowl" opens in select theaters on October 30 and arrives on Netflix on November 25. Berg is also directing Paramount's upcoming "Call of Duty" movie, which he has said will examine the psychological price of being a soldier. Netflix has released a red-band trailer, following an earlier trailer released earlier this month. Whether the film's blend of sports drama and war story lands with audiences will become clearer after its wider release.