The Mosquito Bowl, four football stars become Marines and head to Okinawa

The Mosquito Bowl is Peter Berg’s war drama based on the true story of college football players who enlisted in the U.S. Marines after Pearl Harbor. It opens in select U.S. theaters on October 30, 202

《The Mosquito Bowl》 is director Peter Berg’s 2026 war drama, beginning after the attack on Pearl Harbor as four promising college football players enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. The red-band trailer foregrounds their transformation as they leave the cheers of the stadium behind and enter training and the Pacific front. After opening in select U.S. theaters on October 30, the film will be released on Netflix on November 25.

Four players in uniform

Nicholas Galitzine plays Brown University quarterback John McIlroy, while Bill Skarsgård plays Wisconsin’s Bob Baumann. Ray Nicholson portrays Purdue star Tony Butkovich, and Tom Francis plays David Schreiner, who played at the University of Wisconsin alongside Baumann. The war they encounter is presented as a reality entirely different from the competition they learned through college sports.

A game at Guadalcanal

The “Mosquito Bowl” in the title refers to the legendary football game played by the players who gathered at Guadalcanal. The film’s focus, however, is less the sporting event itself than the camaraderie among the Marines preparing for the invasion of Okinawa and the cost of war. Berg describes the film as “a war movie about a football player in the middle of a war.”

From nonfiction to the screen

The film is based on Buzz Bissinger’s nonfiction book 《The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II》. Berg also participated in the production through Film 44, with Brian Grazer and Alex Gayner credited as co-producers. The official Netflix page lists the runtime as 2 hours and 7 minutes.