BBC1 BID SUCCESSFULLY FOR WAR DRAMA

BBC Resources has won the rushes work for HBO’s new mini series 'Band of Brothers'produced by the Playtone Company and DreamWorks SKG. The mini-series is currently in pre-production.
The rushes work will be carried out by the London arm of BBC Resources on its recently acquired Philips Spirit telecine facility. The Philips Spirit offers high quality pictures and new ESR grading facilities, which promise highly sophisticated colour treatment.
BBC Resources chief executive Margaret Salmon said: “We’re delighted that our team of specialists have been chosen for this prestigious work. Our dedicated team and high end production facilities allow us to deliver the very best in picture quality, be it modern film tape or the earliest archive footage, this is a landmark project for us.”
Most of the production facilities for ‘Band of Brothers’ will be based at the former Hatfield Aerodrome, which also served as the location base for Spielberg’s production of ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Filming commenced on the 11-hour epic in April and continues throughout 2000 ready for broadcast on HBO in 2001.
Salmon said: "'Band of Brothers' is an expensive project. It was available to everybody, but we successfully bid for it. It’s not something we went into lightly. We thought a lot about it”.
The series is based on Stephen Ambrose’s non-fiction bestseller about a World War II U.S Army unit.
It revolves around an elite US corps fighting in the Second World War and involves many of the team that worked on Saving Private Ryan. Drawn from hours of interviews with survivors from East Company’s 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, as well as soldiers’ journals and letters, ‘Band of Brothers’ chronicles a unit that took 150 per cent casualties and became American heroes.
Salmon added: “The scripts read really well. It was warm and moving. We're also doing something with the Battle of Britain as well as ‘Band of Brothers’.”
The multi-million pound Steven Spielberg war drama is to be shown by the BBC next year.