{"id":617202,"date":"2026-09-15T22:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/617202\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T22:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:32:09","slug":"ace-combat-8-live-action-prequel-hour-zero-episodes-josh-holloway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/617202\/","title":{"rendered":"Ace Combat 8 Live-Action Prequel Hour Zero Episodes: Josh Holloway"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBefore \u201cAce Combat 8<\/a>: Wings of Theve\u201d releases next month, fans of Bandai Namco Entertainment\u2019s classic fighter-pilot video game franchise have a few weeks of backstory to brush up on via live-action prequel project \u201cHour Zero<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLaunching its first episode Tuesday,<\/a> the four-installment short film is a first-of-its-kind project for the video game studio, which will reveal the plot going into the upcoming eighth \u201cAce Combat\u201d game.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer Bandai Namco Entertainment America\u2019s description for \u201cHour Zero\u201d: \u201cThree strangers survive the opening days of the Republic of Sotoa\u2019s invasion of the Federation of Central Usea. Josh Holloway<\/a> stars as a pilot with nowhere to land, Brandon Routh as a doctor who saved his enemy, and Tamlyn Tomita as a news anchor silenced for telling the truth. Told in reverse and grounded in the family lives of its three leads, their stories count down to the moment when their normal lives were shattered and war began. Their story sets the stage for the narrative players will experience in the deep, engaging Campaign Mode in \u2018Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project was produced when \u201cAce Combat 8\u2033 was already relatively far into the game development process, and Holloway had some questions before he agreed to join. Up to that point, his only experience working with a video game studio was voicing a character in 2007\u2019s real-time strategy game \u201cCommand & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and that was cinematic footage for the game itself, not a live-action project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt first I had a little reservation,\u201d Holloway tells Variety. \u201cI was like, a video game? I\u2019m not sure. Because I\u2019d done one a long time ago, but it was kind of on the cheesy side a little bit because it was just an internet game. It wasn\u2019t a big thing. So I was a little nervous about it, but I loved this game as a teenager. I remember playing the first \u2018Ace Combat\u2019 games because they would be in the arcades with the big simulator, and I just loved it back then, and then I kind of went away from gaming for many, many years. So when they brought this up, I was like, I know this game, of all things, because I don\u2019t know any games. And I\u2019d seen \u2018Maverick\u2019 not long ago, so my interest was piqued again towards this type of genre, so I was really interested. I just had some immediate questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd once he saw the effort Bandai Namco planned to put into this, Holloway was sold.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like, \u2018What\u2019s the production value? I need to see a script. Do they have me sitting on an apple box with a toothpick in my hand, or is it an actual fuselage?\u2019\u201d Holloway says. \u201cAnd when I got into it and found out how really well done and well prepared they were to do this, I was like, OK, this sounds like fun, and I can have my fighter pilot moment. Once I saw the production value and how he was going about it, I was like, oh yeah, I\u2019m in. Let\u2019s do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSet for release Oct. 2 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and PC, \u201cAce Combat 8: Wings of Theve\u201d takes place amid the lies, conspiracies and gossip that obscure the truth behind an ongoing war and the legendary ace fighting to reclaim the Federation of Central Usea from the Republic of Sotoa.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wrapped around my character first, and the story and how he fit in that,\u201d Holloway says. \u201cSo I was like, OK, I\u2019m the OG pilot from way back. I\u2019m a little older. I\u2019m responsible for everybody. I\u2019ve seen a lot of combat, a lot of death and I\u2019m responsible for these kids. So that brings the stakes because I\u2019m a father. I have children. I\u2019m a leader. I\u2019ve led for many years in my industry and stuff, so I understood all that. And also my father passed not long ago, so I really brought all the stakes. That\u2019s what I had to do in my job as an actor. Now, what\u2019s it going to look like?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHolloway and the Bandai Namco team worked with an actual fighter pilot to advise on the logistics of shooting.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSometimes in a small frame, a lot of emotion and too much movement doesn\u2019t translate,\u201d Holloway says. \u201cSo how do I bring that intensity without going bananas and making it not work? Because this is a new thing for me, being inside a cockpit. How is he going to look when he\u2019s making those turns. How much? How difficult is it? How many Gs are you pulling? What does it really feel like? It was amazing in our production that they had a real pilot there with me, and he\u2019s telling me, \u2018If you\u2019re pulling that G, your body is actually gonna be grunting. You can\u2019t even help it.\u2019 I\u2019m like, oh shit, really? So that was really amazing information to have on the layering of the look and the stakes that you\u2019re bringing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cHour Zero\u201d story will continue to unfold across three more episodes (releasing Sept. 17, Sept. 23 and Sept. 29) before \u201cAce Combat 8: Wings of Theve\u201d is released. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before \u201cAce Combat 8: Wings of Theve\u201d releases next month, fans of Bandai Namco Entertainment\u2019s classic fighter-pilot video…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[221433,279145,85,46,279146,125],"class_list":["post-617202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ace-combat-8","tag-hour-zero","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-josh-holloway","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}