{"id":31296,"date":"2025-07-30T01:21:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/31296\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T01:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:21:04","slug":"band-of-brothers-underrated-follow-up-with-89-on-rt-still-holds-a-big-hbo-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/31296\/","title":{"rendered":"Band Of Brothers’ Underrated Follow-Up With 89% On RT Still Holds A Big HBO Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

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,<\/a> broke the show\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The two series are among the biggest-budget TV productions of all time, along with their 2024 sequel, Masters of the Air. If it\u2019s difficult to rank the Band of Brothers trilogy<\/a> on merit, given the incomparable quality of all three miniseries, then measuring them against one another in budgetary terms is a little easier.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in the Second World War\u2019s Pacific theater, still holds onto the record it set 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

The Pacific Is HBO’s Most Expensive Show \u2013 Why It Cost So Much<\/p>\n

The Scale & Scope Of The Show\u2019s Battle Scenes Went Far Beyond What Was Anticipated<\/p>\n

To this day, The Pacific is still the most expensive HBO show ever produced, having cost around $217 million to make (via THR<\/a>). The show\u2019s initial budget compared favorably with the original Band of Brothers<\/a> series, as it was set at $100m. In practice, this target proved to be a huge underestimate.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t work out that way, however, as the show\u2019s plot features larger-scale battle sequences than Band of Brothers, which necessitated the use of thousands of extras.<\/p>\n

Band of Brothers Series By Cost<\/p>\n

Series<\/p>\n

Cost To Produce<\/p>\n

Masters of the Air (2024)<\/p>\n

$250m<\/p>\n

The Pacific (2010)<\/p>\n

$217m<\/p>\n

Band of Brothers (2001)<\/p>\n

$125m<\/p>\n

What\u2019s 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\u2019s fifth episode cost around $5 million to make .<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Pacific Was Worth The Price<\/p>\n

It Took Realism In The War Genre To New Heights<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/p>\n

\"Soldiers<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\tEvery The Pacific Episode, Ranked Worst To Best
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For the most part, the series manages to realize its ambitions. The Pacific episode \u201cOkinawa\u201d rivals the best of Band of Brothers<\/a>, and most of the show\u2019s battle scenes actually outdo the 2001 original on the technical front.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s possible in rendering real-life military battle sequences onscreen.<\/p>\n

Sources: THR<\/a><\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tThe Pacific
\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Release Date<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t2010 – 2010-00-00<\/p>\n

Network<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO Max<\/p>\n

Directors<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Nutter<\/p>\n

Writers<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Nutter<\/p>\n

\"052048_poster_w780.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tBand of Brothers
\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ScreenRant<\/p>\n

10\/10<\/p>\n

Release Date<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t2001 – 2001<\/p>\n

Network<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n

Directors<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Frankel, David Nutter, Mikael Salomon, Phil Alden Robinson, Richard Loncraine, Tom Hanks<\/a><\/p>\n

Writers<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBruce C. McKenna, Graham Yost, John Orloff<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Damian Lewis<\/p>\n

\n Richard D. Winters\n <\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Donnie Wahlberg<\/p>\n

\n C. Carwood Lipton\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Band of Brothers rightly retains its own place in television history as arguably the greatest miniseries of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-31296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}