All-star cast headlines Peter Berg’s WWII drama 'The Mosquito Bowl'
The Mosquito Bowl lines up a stacked cast to sprint from gridiron glory to the front lines — and wait till you see who’s on the roster.
Director Peter Berg is building The Mosquito Bowl around four real-life college standouts who traded fall Saturdays for the Pacific front after Pearl Harbor. Netflix ’s WWII drama centers on Marines who were stars on campus before they were shipped overseas, with the story anchored by the gridiron leaders they once were — and the brutal choices they faced far from any stadium.
- Nicholas Galitzine — John McLaughry, the disciplined Brown University quarterback and team captain whose leadership follows him into the Marines.
- Bill Skarsgård — Bob Baumann, a University of Wisconsin tackle whose toughness carries from the line of scrimmage to the Pacific Theater.
- Ray Nicholson — Tony Butkovich, Purdue’s powerhouse fullback and one of college football’s feared offensive weapons before enlistment.
- Tom Francis — David Schreiner, Wisconsin’s All-American end, stepping into the film fresh off his West End run in Sunset Boulevard.
The Marines around them are just as sharply cast. Brent Comer appears as Notre Dame quarterback George Murphy, Pat McAfee takes on a Marine Drill Instructor, Dominic Bogart plays battle-hardened Sergeant Wilkes, and Ella Newton is Jane. Stacy Clausen and Scott Lee portray fellow Marines, and Claudia Ware steps in as USO-era star Frances Langford.
The real “Mosquito Bowl”
The title nods to an infamous wartime matchup. On Christmas Eve 1944, Marines on Guadalcanal cleared a regulation football field from dirt and sharp coral and staged a full-on exhibition — lineups, ceremony, everything — amid swarms of actual mosquitoes.
On Christmas Eve 1944, U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal staged a full football game that became known as the Mosquito Bowl.
The island’s Mosquito Radio Network broadcast the game with play-by-play and starting lineups, and between the bugs and the tongue-in-cheek pomp, the “bowl” nickname stuck. Berg’s film folds that slice of wartime life into a story about athletes-turned-Marines whose biggest game was never about a trophy.
Netflix will release The Mosquito Bowl; a premiere date hasn’t been announced.