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EXCLUSIVE: Peter Berg’s Film 44 has renewed it creative partnership with Netflix to produce and direct live-action films and series. The news follows the success of Berg’s #1 limited series, American Primeval, which spent four weeks on the Netflix Global Top 10 TV (English) and racked up 35.1M views. Film 44’s Painkiller, the last limited series for Netflix directed by Berg, spent five weeks on the Netflix Global Top 10 TV List (English), accumulating 29.1M views.
The next project under the partnership, which Berg co-wrote, will direct, and is producing alongside Brian Grazer at Imagine and Alex Gayner, is the feature adaptation of Buzz Bissinger’s instant New York Times bestseller The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II.
Berg co-wrote script with Mark L. Smith and is set after the attack on Pearl Harbor when four of America’s top College Football stars set their fame aside to enlist in the Marines. As they prepare for the brutal invasion of Okinawa, they’ll play in a legendary game featuring some of the greatest players in history – a game that, for many, will be the last they ever play.
A casting search is currently under way to find the films four leads. Ezra Emanuel will exec produce.
This film reunites Grazer and Berg who had previously worked together on the hit film Friday Night Lights, another adaptation based on a Bissinger classic that redefined the sports movie and would ultimately lead to one of the great TV dramas of this century, which Berg and Grazer co-created with Jason Katims. That show would not only join the ranks of the peak TV boom we saw at that time but would help launch the careers of such rising stars as Taylor Kitsch, Jesse Plemons and Michael B. Jordan. The two are also working together on a new rebooted Friday Night Lights TV series at Peacock.
“Bela and the entire team at Netflix have been tremendous partners to me, both in film and television,” said Berg. “I cherish this partnership and feel fully supported as I continue on this beautiful creative odyssey. LFG!”
Berg is repped by WME and Hirsch, Wallerstein, Hayum, Matlof and Fishman.
The post Peter Berg’s Film 44 Reups Deal With Netflix; Sets ‘Mosquito Bowl’ As First Film Under New Pact Reuniting With Brian Grazer appeared first on Deadline.
