‘The Mosquito Bowl’ Trailer Brings Peter Berg’s WWII Football Epic Into Focus
Peter Berg is taking audiences from the football field to the Pacific battlefield with The Mosquito Bowl, and the first trailer makes clear that Netflix is aiming for a sweeping World War II drama with awards-season ambitions.
The film will open in select U.S. theaters on October 30, 2026, before arriving on Netflix on November 25. The theatrical release is being used for Oscar eligibility.
From the trailer, The Mosquito Bowl carries the look of a very specific kind of 2000s war movie. The muted, desaturated photography recalls Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the two-part World War II saga released in 2006. Berg is working with cinematographer Jacques Jouffret, whose imagery gives the film a similarly restrained visual character.
Four football stars trade fame for the Marines
At the center of the story are four of America’s top college football players: John McLaughry, played by Nicholas Galitzine; Bob Bauman, played by Bill Skarsgård; Tony Butkovich, played by Ray Nicholson; and David Schreiner, played by Tom Francis.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the four put their promising athletic careers aside and enlist in the Marines. What begins with a desire to serve soon places them in the middle of the brutal realities of World War II.
As they prepare for the invasion of Okinawa, the players find themselves part of a legendary football game involving some of the greatest college football players of the era. For many of the men who took part, it would become the final game they ever played.
The story is based on Pulitzer Prize winner Buzz Bissinger’s New York Times bestselling book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II. Bissinger’s book recounts the experiences of college football players who entered military service during the war and the extraordinary game that brought many of them together before the Battle of Okinawa.
Peter Berg returns to familiar territory
Berg is a particularly fitting filmmaker for material that combines football, military service and American identity. His filmography includes Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor, Patriots Day, and Deepwater Horizon, with several of those projects focused on athletes, soldiers, first responders or ordinary Americans placed in extraordinary circumstances.
That sensibility is apparent in The Mosquito Bowl. The film centers on young, blue-collar and middle-class American men who leave their previous lives behind to serve their country, a type of character and setting that has become closely associated with Berg’s work.
Berg is also reuniting with Bissinger in an interesting way. Bissinger wrote Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, which Berg adapted into the 2004 film Friday Night Lights and later helped develop into the acclaimed television series that premiered in 2006.
A cast led by Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård
Galitzine, Skarsgård, Nicholson and Francis lead the film, with Brent Comer and Dominic Bogart also among the cast. Pat McAfee appears as a drill instructor, an unusual piece of casting that will inevitably draw attention when the film arrives.
Berg co-wrote the screenplay with Mark L. Smith, whose credits include The Revenant. Berg also directed and produced the film, with Brian Grazer producing for Imagine Entertainment and Alex Gayner. Executive producers include Ezra Emanuel, Buzz Bissinger, and Jeb Brody.
The production was filmed in Australia, including locations in Queensland and northern New South Wales, with the Australian landscape standing in for both Marine training grounds and the Pacific Theater.
The production also appears to have placed a strong emphasis on physical realism. Netflix’s first-look material describes the film as a reality-based account, while Galitzine has said the cast worked with limited use of stunt doubles, including scenes involving explosives, fire and other battlefield effects.
The trailer looks promising, but Berg still has something to prove
There is plenty here to suggest that The Mosquito Bowl could be one of Berg’s more natural projects in years. His best work often comes when sports, duty and real historical events intersect, and this story brings all three together.
At the same time, expectations should probably remain measured.
Berg’s recent run has been uneven. Spenser Confidential became one of his less successful Netflix projects, while Mile 22 failed to make much of an impression with critics. That makes The Mosquito Bowl an important opportunity for him to return to the kind of grounded, muscular storytelling that worked particularly well in Lone Survivor and Patriots Day.
The early reception from critics will ultimately determine whether the film becomes a serious awards-season player. Berg has received strong critical support before, but it has been relatively selective. Patriots Day currently holds an 80% Tomatometer score, while Deepwater Horizon sits at 82% and the 2004 Friday Night Lights film at 82%.
A World War II drama with football at its center
What makes The Mosquito Bowl stand out is the contrast at its core. These are celebrated college athletes who begin the story with the possibility of professional sporting careers ahead of them. The attack on Pearl Harbor changes that trajectory completely.
Their transition from football stars to Marines eventually leads them toward Okinawa, while the football game becomes a final reminder of the lives and futures they left behind.
Netflix describes the film as a story about brotherhood and the cost of war, while Berg has emphasized the human connections that exist even within traumatic environments. The trailer suggests that the film will move between intimate character moments, football and large-scale combat rather than treating the war solely as an action spectacle.
Whether Berg can turn that material into a genuinely moving war epic remains to be seen. The theatrical release on October 30 gives The Mosquito Bowl a chance to make its case on the big screen before its Netflix debut on November 25.
Watch the official trailer
The Mosquito Bowl opens in select U.S. theaters October 30, 2026, and premieres on Netflix November 25, 2026.