Netflix has released the official teaser for The Mosquito Bowl, Peter Berg’s upcoming World War II drama starring Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson and Tom Francis as college football stars who trade the gridiron for the battlefield.
Based on the bestselling nonfiction book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger, the film tells the true story of some of America’s greatest college football players who put their athletic careers aside to enlist in the Marines following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Galitzine stars as Brown University quarterback John McLaughry, a natural leader who played under his own father before joining the Marines. Skarsgård plays University of Wisconsin standout Bob Baumann, while Nicholson portrays Purdue star Tony Butkovich, one of the era’s most accomplished offensive players. Francis plays David Schreiner, another University of Wisconsin star known for his strategic approach to the game.
The four young men are pulled from the promise of college football into the brutal realities of the Pacific Theater. As they prepare for the invasion of Okinawa, they take part in a legendary football game featuring an extraordinary collection of players serving in the Marine Corps — a game that would be the last for many of the men involved.
Watch The Mosquito Bowl Teaser
The first teaser blends the camaraderie and competition of football with the violence of war, offering an early look at Berg’s recreation of both the battlefield and the remarkable game at the center of the story.
Berg is particularly well suited to a story that combines football and combat. He previously directed Friday Night Lights, based on Bissinger’s landmark book about Texas high school football, as well as the military drama Lone Survivor. The Mosquito Bowl reunites Berg with Bissinger’s work more than two decades after the 2004 Friday Night Lights film.
The real Mosquito Bowl was played on Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve 1944 by Marines preparing for the invasion of Okinawa. The game brought together an exceptional collection of former college football players, some of whom would never return home.
For the film, Berg sought to give the combat sequences a visceral sense of reality. Galitzine has said the actors performed much of the physical work themselves with limited use of stunt doubles as explosions, fire and other practical effects surrounded them during filming.
Brent Comer and Dominic Bogart also appear in the cast.
The Mosquito Bowl was filmed in Australia, including locations in Queensland and northern New South Wales, with the landscape doubling for Marine training grounds and the Pacific Theater.
When Does The Mosquito Bowl Premiere?
The Mosquito Bowl opens in select theaters on October 30, 2026 before streaming globally on Netflix on November 25, 2026.
Thomas Miller is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Seat42F, covering television, movies and streaming entertainment. He launched Seat42F in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades covering the entertainment industry.
