Although Band of Brothers rightly retains its own place in television history as arguably the greatest miniseries of all time, its follow-up, The Pacific, broke the show’s record in 2010. While Band of Brothers cost a whopping $125 million to make at the turn of the millennium, The Pacific was almost twice as expensive to produce.
The two series are among the biggest-budget TV productions of all time, along with their 2024 sequel, Masters of the Air. If it’s difficult to rank the Band of Brothers trilogy on merit, given the incomparable quality of all three miniseries, then measuring them against one another in budgetary terms is a little easier.
Unlike its forerunners, Masters of the Air was produced by Apple TV+, not HBO. As a result, The Pacific, which tells the true story of U.S. Marine Corps soldiers in the Second World War’s Pacific theater, still holds onto the record it set 15 years ago.
The Pacific Is HBO’s Most Expensive Show – Why It Cost So Much
The Scale & Scope Of The Show’s Battle Scenes Went Far Beyond What Was Anticipated
To this day, The Pacific is still the most expensive HBO show ever produced, having cost around $217 million to make (via THR). The show’s initial budget compared favorably with the original Band of Brothers series, as it was set at $100m. In practice, this target proved to be a huge underestimate.
The production companies behind the miniseries anticipated that using fewer actors of note in its main cast would allow for a smaller outlay on screen performers overall. Things didn’t work out that way, however, as the show’s plot features larger-scale battle sequences than Band of Brothers, which necessitated the use of thousands of extras.
Band of Brothers Series By Cost
Series
Cost To Produce
Masters of the Air (2024)
$250m
The Pacific (2010)
$217m
Band of Brothers (2001)
$125m
What’s more, these battle sequences were inordinately expensive to shoot and edit because of the locations, set designs, and CGI special effects they required. The three-minute Peleliu landing scene in The Pacific’s fifth episode cost around $5 million to make .
As well as the eye-watering cost of combat scenes, the bespoke costumes which had to be made for the thousands of actors who play U.S. and Japanese soldiers in The Pacific also added millions of dollars to the budget. The series ended up costing more than double the budget agreed upon during pre-production.
The Pacific Was Worth The Price
It Took Realism In The War Genre To New Heights
Nevertheless, the level of authenticity realized on such a grand scale by The Pacific makes its enormous budget money well spent. The show aims even higher than the original Band of Brothers in its ambitious attempt to recreate the Pacific theater of World War II, in more sweeping terms than its forerunner told the story of the legendary Easy Company.
Related
Every The Pacific Episode, Ranked Worst To Best
HBO’s critically-acclaimed miniseries The Pacific tells a tight story of World War II survival in ten parts, but not every entry is created equally.
For the most part, the series manages to realize its ambitions. The Pacific episode “Okinawa” rivals the best of Band of Brothers, and most of the show’s battle scenes actually outdo the 2001 original on the technical front.
Band of Brothers will continue to be the benchmark for TV war dramas for the foreseeable future. But The Pacific is unfairly overlooked, and underrated compared to the miniseries which preceded it, and deserves far more credit than it gets for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in rendering real-life military battle sequences onscreen.
Sources: THR
Release Date
2010 – 2010-00-00
Network
HBO Max
Directors
David Nutter
Writers
David Nutter
10/10
Release Date
2001 – 2001
Network
HBO
Directors
David Frankel, David Nutter, Mikael Salomon, Phil Alden Robinson, Richard Loncraine, Tom Hanks
Writers
Bruce C. McKenna, Graham Yost, John Orloff
Damian Lewis
Richard D. Winters
Donnie Wahlberg
C. Carwood Lipton