The Big Picture

Masters of the Air, produced by Spielberg, Hanks, and Goetzman, is an epic war drama that took a decade to make and is a worthy successor to Band of Brothers and The Pacific. The series combines personal stories of brotherhood with intense recreations of B-17 battles during WWII, making for gripping and heartbreaking action-packed sequences. The show revolves around the friendship between the characters played by Austin Butler and Callum Turner and also explores the compelling stories of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Masters of the Air is an epic war drama that has literally been a decade in the making — and it shows. Thanks to the producing trio of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, the team previously responsible for the groundbreaking series Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010) are finally unveiling their newest project tackling the battles that played out in the air during World War II. Although the Apple TV+ series largely takes inspiration (as well as its name) from Donald L. Miller’s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, it pairs more intimate personal stories of brotherhood with staggering recreations of what played out in the cockpits of these Boeing B-17s, otherwise known as “Flying Fortresses.”

From an impressive international cast consisting of presences like Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Callum Turner, Ncuti Gatwa, Nate Mann, and Anthony Boyle to action-packed battle sequences that prove to be as gripping as they are heartbreaking, Masters of the Air is well on its way to cementing itself as a worthy companion series to what came before and the first must-watch show of 2024. Ahead of the series’ premiere of its first two episodes on Apple TV+, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several involved in the making of Masters of the Air — including Goetzman. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the show’s executive producer discusses the long road to making the series after it went into initial development in 2013, what proved to be the deciding factor in moving forward with production, and why the show always revolved around the friendship between Butler and Turner’s characters. He also reveals what may be next for Masters of the Air’s producing team in the wake of the show’s release on Apple TV+, why they wanted to include the stories of the Tuskegee Airmen, and more.

Masters of the Air During WWII, five miles above the ground and behind enemy lines, ten men inside a bomber known as a “Flying Fortress” battle unrelenting flocks of German fighters. Release Date January 26, 2024 Creator John Orloff Main Genre Drama Seasons 1

Steven Spielberg’s Father Was Part of the Inspiration Behind ‘Masters of the Air’
Image via Apple TV+

COLLIDER: I wanted to start by asking you about the genesis of this project because this isn’t the first time this producing team has tackled stories from this particular era. What was most intriguing about adapting this? Was it because it was kind of a different battleground, so to speak?

GARY GOETZMAN: Yeah, it was a different milieu of fighting. We had the Stephen Ambrose book on Band of Brothers, we did more of an anthological thing on The Pacific. The success of Band made HBO really wanna do something else. We wanted to do something a little harder-edged, believe it or not, on the islands with the Japanese, and we were kind of done, you know? And Steven Spielberg’s dad had been in the Army Air Force and always quizzed his son on why we weren’t doing one about the pilots, the boys in the air, the war over Europe. So, it was in the back of our minds, and eventually, a book came along by Don Miller called Masters of the Air.

We ate it up. We got into more research about certain men, and we thought we found a story, right? There was no hurry about it — all the studio situations seemed in flux, as they can seem sometimes for a couple of years, as you know probably better than anybody. But we did get to a point where we thought, “The technology to do what we have to do to make this story work up there in the air is probably upon us.” So, that became the trigger to say, “Okay, we think we can pull this off,” and we did it. But it was instigated by Steven’s father, and then finding the book, finding the technology.

This had a somewhat longer development process, but as you just said, you weren’t really in any hurry to find that next project. Was it really just a matter of waiting until the technology caught up to the point where you felt like you could render this story as close to accurate as possible?

GOETZMAN: Yes, a bit. Also, in prep, you start to interview actors, and at a point, you go, “Hey, these guys, we don’t want them getting any older. Let’s start going.” Because we really do love our lead actors so deeply, and it just seemed like the chemistry started feeling right. “Let’s do it.” And that’s what happened.

These scripts are very personal, but then you do tackle these major devastating moments in the war. How did you try to figure out the balance of historical fact with personal narrative? It all really comes together to create this nicely comprehensive story of the air war.

GOETZMAN: Lucky. [Laughs] Just lucky! The process, how it exactly hooked up, it’s all banging around. You’re working on so many things on a project like this at once, and it’s something comes great out of this corner and something great here. Some days it’s like nothing works, and other days it’s like, “We can make that work and that work.” We had a great visual effects supervisor, Academy Award-winner Stephen Rosenbaum, and he really made it so we felt more confident about going in the air and making people feel like they were up there with us.

‘Masters of the Air’ Was Always Centered Around Austin Butler and Callum Turner’s Characters
Image via Apple TV+

Speaking of your actors and then also finding these story details, the central relationship in this show, the brotherhood between Egan and Cleven, is really what this story hinges on. Why did it feel important to center the show around these two specifically?

GOETZMAN: It always was, really, from the beginning. Just because of their positions, both being majors with very different personalities in reality, but who got each other and had a lot of love between them. Don’t you just want to hang with them?

Oh, yeah! [Laughs]

GOETZMAN: They’re cool.

The latter half of the season really narrows in on the Tuskegee Airmen and the role that they contribute, in many ways, to turn the tide in the war. Why did you want to shift the focus to them?

GOETZMAN: We didn’t really know, initially, whether that was even a possibility. From Don’s book, actually, we learned that the Tuskegee had actually been in one of the same Stalag that our guys had been, Stalag 3. Once we knew that, we started digging into their stories and their narratives and going as far as we could go with them. And it’s not bullshit. This is really what happened. They got in the camp, and they have stories about what happened with them with white pilots in the camp. They then did the marches with our boys. They went on to Moosburg. When you have an opportunity to weave such a fantastic unit into this show, we couldn’t resist that.

What’s Next for Spielberg, Hanks, and Goetzman After ‘Masters of the Air’?
Image via Apple TV+

I know you’re in the midst of promoting this show, but I have to ask if there are any ideas for other shows on the horizon — and if so, can you talk about them at all?

GOETZMAN: I think Apple TV+ would love Tom [Hanks] to write another of the Greyhound Navy movie that he did, that is on Apple TV+. That might be something that might happen, and then that would probably do us for World War II.

[Laughs] Fair enough.

GOETZMAN: We would do that pretty quickly. Remember, this is a nine-hour movie. Nine hours. You think you’re rocking, and then here’s another seven-and-a-half hours. You know what I mean? It really was time-intensive. The next one would be a movie, a normal movie, and a normal amount of time.

Masters of the Air is currently available to stream on Apple TV+, with new episodes premiering every Friday.

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