This is pretty awesome news. 

http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/10/19/hbo-wants-a-new-world-war-ii-series-and-they-got-david-finch.html

I'm glad they're continuing these series.  I think they're important, esp if they're done (fairly) accurately.  I love Band of Brothers and The Pacific.  I'd like to see many more, it's a great format for the subject and there's so many stories to tell.  Hopefully they don't try to do too much as in Pacific. 

I had previously read that HBO wasn't going to be making these super expensive series anymore, but this must mean they are still lucrative which can only mean moar.

I hope the action and dialogue is realistic like the Pacific and not sanitized and cartoony like Band of Brothers.  I have yet to be able to finish a single episode after trying three times.

Thematically the Pacific theater is tough due to the island hopping.  Might be a carrier based squadron like the Enterprise rather than something like Black sheep squadron.

Someone should do Anzio since most people don't know we were never able to defeat the Germans in Italy.  Or how about the Spielberg crew move out of WW2 into the more complex and pertinent Korean War and do the Frozen Chosin.   

It's an overall ambiance thing that I simply can't connect with.  There's a slight Disneyesque/Warhorse kind of sheen to it.  Something like of the sum of a bunch of little things messing up the overall effect of sincerity.  As far as a sense of genuineness Private Ryan had it, Pacific had it, Das Boot had it, City of Life and Death had it, Hurt Locker had it (for the most part).  I'd have to try to sit through it again and do a point by point analysis.  I found the dialogue and interactions between characters in BoB pretty shallow and often forced tbh.  I was much more drawn into every character in Private Ryan w/ the development that took place in about an hour compared to all the time BoB spent on their character development.  In a way, let's just say BoB was neutral, had low distortion but also weaker dynamic range and lacked holographic imaging for me.

John Basilone is one of the most famous Marines in history along with Chesty Puller so it would be hard to do a Pacific story w/o him.  Especially what he/they did on Guadalcanal.  Since the story was based on the diaries of the actual men maybe they should have tried telling each story as an individual chapter/short story rather than splicing stuff together.  Or keep it separate until Iwo.

Edit - See I call massive BS on scenes like this.  They need orders to seek cover?  Advance in plain view and stand around out in the open talking about shit?  Germans say 'Fire!' in English?  What??  Germans flee into isolated and enclosed buildings w/ no way out so they can get grenaded together w/o possibility of returning fire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6da9U6Xjd8

Definitely not Warhorse bad, only like 10% of that on the Disney meter.  Reminds me of something I think nikongod said about multi BAs once.  Most people don't notice multi driver incoherency, but once you hear it you'll laser right in on it from then on.

I get BoB storyline, it is phenomenal in it's epic character deployment and using the real vets was well done.  They couldn't do that in the Pacific since they had already died.

I didn't mean to say 'fame' was critical to his inclusion but what he did was essential as was what the Marines did at Guadalcanal was even though they were surrounded on land and sea by the Japanese. http://www.basiloneparade.com/citation-guad.htm That was core to the plot and history of the conflict.  I wish they had somehow worked in the Tarawa landing to set the stage from the outset.  Imagine the underwater scenes from Private Ryan at Normandy but with a shallow coral reef (3 feet deep) extending over 500s yard from the beaches landing zone with Marines strung out all over taking fire.  Freaks me out thinking about it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa

When you advance, you use cover if it's there, you don't need an order to keep from someone blowing your head off.  It happens a few times, like a scene where a mass of Airborne are huddled up on a road into an enemy town and they decide to charge down the road straight in, even though the outer perimeter has tons of tall grass and buildings to use as natural cover.  Their camouflage is green, not asphalt colored.  Infantry would never charge down the middle of town road, that's called 'channeling' and is exactly what you want if you are a defender. That's how the 300 Spartans punished Xerxes for so long by using the Hot Gates.