The Mosquito Bowl reaches select theaters on October 30, with its Netflix debut following on November 25. Peter Berg’s World War II drama follows college football players who leave their athletic careers to join the Marines after Pearl Harbor.
Netflix announced the release schedule on September 9. The two dates give U.S. viewers separate options: a limited theatrical run beginning this Friday, or streaming nearly a month later. The October 30 opening is not the Netflix streaming date.
Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson and Tom Francis star. Berg, whose earlier films include Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor, adapted Buzz Bissinger’s nonfiction book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II.
The game behind the title
Bissinger described the history long before the film’s arrival. In a June 2018 essay for the Sixth Marine Division Association, he recounted a Christmas Eve 1944 football game between the division’s 4th and 29th Regiments on Guadalcanal.
According to Bissinger, the game began as touch football and turned into tackle. Both teams included accomplished college players, and the game ended in a 0-0 tie. The 4th Regiment’s commander, Alan Shapley, refused a proposed rematch because he did not want his men injured playing football before battle. The men later fought at Okinawa.
