The upcoming World War II movie, which is based on Buzz Bissinger's 2022 historical fiction novel of the same name, follows a famous Marine Corps football game played by enlisted U.S. football players shortly before the battle of Okinawa. 2026's The Mosquito Bowl, which was directed by Peter Berg, stars Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White, & Royal Blue, Masters of the Universe), Bill Skarsgård (It, Nosferatu), Ray Nicholson (Smile 2, Novocaine), and Tony nominee Tom Francis (Sunset Boulevard, You) and is set to debut in theaters on October 30 before streaming on Netflix on November 25, the day before American Thanksgiving.
Peter Berg is the creator of the football drama Friday Night Lights as well as the director of the 2004 movie of the same name, both of which were also based on a book by Buzz Bissinger.
Netflix has now unveiled the first official trailer for The Mosquito Bowl. The nearly two-minute video offers the best look yet at what the upcoming movie has to offer, beginning with a bird's eye view of a truck carrying new recruits across a swampy landscape. Over this image, as well as intense shots of the soldiers fighting in a battle, Bill Skarsgård's character speaks about a trancelike feeling that he describes as a "white buzz," which he gets when he's playing football.
The scene then shifts to bodies colliding on a football field, visually linking the game to the battles on the war front. As his speech continues, various emotional moments from the main characters' lives are splashed across the screen, including scenes of terror, triumph, and a moment where they are visibly moved by a musical performance. The trailer continues as shots of the football game alternate with shots of battle. Also sprinkled into the montage are moments of recreation, including the main characters hanging out together on a beach.
The trailer ends on the battlefront, with an intense moment of a soldier being swept up in the ocean as a huge wave crests. See the full trailer for the football movie below:
Above all, it is clear that the first trailer for The Mosquito Bowl seeks to express that the movie explores the theme of brotherhood, both between teammates and between soldiers in the same battalion.
It also seems to heavily imply that the battle of Okinawa will be just as important in the narrative as the titular football game. While it remains to be seen if the proportion of football scenes versus battle scenes in the finished product is similar to that of the trailer, this early look at the Bill Skarsgård movie suggests that it could very much be 50-50 in a similar manner to the classic 2001 war movie Pearl Harbor, which splits its time between the titular attack and the Doolittle Raid.
This approach, if it is carried out in the movie itself, would differentiate The Mosquito Bowl greatly from the recent World War II sports drama The Boys in the Boat, which debuted in late 2023. That movie followed the University of Washington rowing team as they prepared for the Summer Olympics during the war, and the way their conflict reflected America's at the time, but it focused on civilians rather than the soldiers actively fighting the war.
Director
Peter Berg
Writers
Peter Berg, Mark L. Smith
English (US) ·