Director Peter Berg's WWII film The Mosquito Bowl premieres at AFI Fest
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The gist
Director Peter Berg's WWII drama The Mosquito Bowl premiered at AFI Fest before its Oct 30 release.
Critics are split on the film about Marines who played a real 1944 game.
Background
The Mosquito Bowl is director Peter Berg's adaptation of Buzz Bissinger's 2022 nonfiction book of the same name; Bissinger is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who also wrote the book behind Berg's Friday Night Lights. Berg is known for both football films (Friday Night Lights) and war films (Lone Survivor), and this project combines the two. The story follows four celebrated college football players who enlisted in the Marine Corps after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and ended up in the Pacific during WWII, culminating in a real football game played by Marines on Guadalcanal as they prepared for the Okinawa campaign. It is in the news now because it just had its world premiere at AFI Fest and opens in theaters nationwide on Oct 30, 2026, before streaming on Netflix on Nov 25, 2026.
How it unfolded
- Dec 1941The attack on Pearl Harbor prompts four college football stars to enlist in the Marine Corps.
- Dec 24, 1944Two regiments of the 6th Marine Division, the 4th and 29th, organize a football game on Guadalcanal; more than a thousand Marines watch, and it becomes known as the Mosquito Bowl.
- 1945Months later, many of the players are killed in the Battle of Okinawa.
- 2022Buzz Bissinger publishes the nonfiction book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the inspiration for the film.
- Oct 22, 2026The film has its world premiere at AFI Fest.
- Oct 23, 2026Reviews from AFI Fest are published.
- Oct 30, 2026The film opens in movie theaters nationwide.
- Nov 25, 2026The film streams on Netflix.
Who’s saying what
- Support
- Deadline critic Pete Hammond calls it one of the most effective antiwar films he has ever seen, one that never resorts to preaching or false patriotic posturing.
- Support
- The Hollywood Reporter critic Angie Han calls it eternal in its truth and devastating in its poignancy, though she notes the storytelling often falls short of the spectacle.
- Caution
- Next Best Picture critic Matt Neglia says it respects those who gave their lives but feels derivative of greater works despite engaging performances from Skarsgård, Nicholson and Francis.
- Caution
- Cinemasters critic Rua Fay says it has a lot more wrong with it than right, is edited bizarrely like a trailer, and its first thirty minutes feel amateur.
- Official
- Director Peter Berg says he wanted to remind people that someone dying in WWII looks and sounds the same as people dying in Ukraine or the Middle East today, and that war is hell and should be avoided.
Still unverified
Sources differ on the number of players and deaths: some report 15 of 65 players killed, while Stars and Stripes reports 14 of 64 killed.