> PARIS (Reuters) - Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, inspired by their
> award-winning film "Saving Private Ryan," return to the D-Day beaches in
> June to unveil their latest World War Two epic -- a multi-million dollar
> TV series.
>
> "Band of Brothers," a true-life tale tracing the dramatic exploits of a
> U.S. army unit as it fights its way across Europe, had a $120 million
> budget and is being billed as one of the most expensive television
> programs in history.
>
> The series will receive its premiere in an auditorium seating 1,000 people
> to be built beside Normandy's Utah Beach, the scene of some of the
> fiercest D-Day fighting.
>
> The screening is set for June 6, the 57th anniversary of the 1944 landings
> by allied forces on the heavily defended Channel beaches of
> German-occupied France.
>
> "We decided that an extraordinary story and project like this demanded an
> extraordinary premiere," Richard Pepler, the executive vice president at
> U.S. pay-TV network Home Box Office (HBO) which funded the 10-part
> extravaganza, said Wednesday.
>
> Filmed in Britain last year over eight intensive months, "Band of
> Brothers" features some 500 speaking parts, employed 10,000 extras and was
> put together by eight directors.
>
> The 1998 picture "Saving Private Ryan" won Spielberg an Oscar as best
> director and left the two Hollywood heavyweights hungry for more war
> drama.
>
> They decided on adapting a best-selling book by Stephen Ambrose, which
> focuses on a small group of soldiers in the U.S. army's 101st Airborne
> Division.
>
> The story follows the men of Easy Company through training and onto D-Day
> when they parachute into France behind Nazi German enemy lines. It
> climaxes with their daring capture in 1945 of Hitler's fortified mountain
> retreat, the Eagle's Nest.
>
> WALK-ON PART FOR HANKS
> Realizing that such a huge story could not be told in one feature-length
> film, Spielberg and Hanks suggested it as a 10-part television serial and
> quickly got HBO on board.
>
> In a change of role, Spielberg and Hanks executive produce "Band of
> Brothers," while Hanks also directs an episode -- not an entirely happy
> experience by his own admission.
>
> "I'm much happier being on the other side of the camera," he tells series
> web site, http//members.aol.com/amblin55/BOB.htm.
>
> Hanks's acting in the series is limited to a fleeting walk-on part.
> HBO spared no expense when it came to special effects. By the third
> episode of shooting, more pyrotechnics had been used than in the entire
> production of Saving Private Ryan, while more than 130 tons of paper was
> used to create snow for a single forest set -- a record, HBO say.
>
> The production managed to save money by shunning stars.
> With the exception of Friends favorite David Schwimmer, the cast consists
> of virtual unknowns, but HBO executives insist that this was an artistic
> rather than financial decision.
>
> "It is important that people don't just see this as Hollywood. We want to
> make people understand that had they been born 75 years earlier it would
> have been them going off to fight," Anne Thomopoulos, who oversaw Band of
> Brothers for HBO, told a news conference in Paris.
>
> The series will be broadcast in the United States from September 9 and
> will play on European television in the weeks and months that follow.
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