The Pacific goes to war with Hey Hey It’s Saturday

Channel Seven is bringing the fight to Nine on Wednesday nights by premiering its brand new war series The Pacific in the same time-slot as Nine’s returning entertainment show Hey Hey It’s Saturday.

The Steven Spielberg-produced mini-series will slot into Seven’s Wednesday night line-up at 8.30pm, with the first episode on 14th April.

The Pacific has been created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and features some of Australia’s best known actors including Gary Sweet, Zoe Carides, Claire van der Boom, Bill Hunter, Isabel Lucas and Anna Torv. Adding to this list are some of this country’s up and coming stars, including Joshua Helman, Leon Ford, Tom Budge, Dylan Young and Kate Bell.

Production of the series started in Port Douglas, Far North Queensland for the first two-and-a-half months with key locations including Drumsara in Mossman, which doubled for the jungles of the islands of Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu, and where the production recreated a coconut plantation common to the Pacific islands. Beach landings at Guadalcanal (episode one) and Peleliu (episode five) were staged at Rocky Point, which was also the location for the Alligator Creek battle on Guadalcanal (episode one).

Production continued in and around Melbourne, for the remaining six-and-a-half months. Interior scenes were filmed on soundstages at Melbourne Central City Studios, and several large-scale sets were built at Hillview Quarry in Victoria’s You Yang’s district, including the battlefields of inland Peleliu (episode six and seven), Iwo Jima (episode eight) and Okinawa (episode nine).

The series is based around the true stories of three U.S. Marines named Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone during their campaign around the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The ten part series begins fighting Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, to their R&R leave in Melbourne, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day.

Each episode includes a 2- to 3-minute introduction comprised of anecdotes from actual World War II marines and archival March of Times newsreel footage, narrated by Tom Hanks.

Seven co-produced the $200m project alongside HBO and Dreamworks and is looking to build hype to the mini-series event by rolling with Spielberg/Hanks-powered Saving Private Ryan next Wednesday night as a lead-in.