Production of The Pacific, a 10-hour miniseries chronicling the US marines who fought in the Pacific during World War 2, will begin on August 13 in Australia as a co-production between HBO Films in association with Playtone and DreamWorks Television, and Australia’s Seven Network. Shooting through mid-2008, the mini is executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the creative team behind the Emmy-winning 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. The production is based at Melbourne Central City Studios, with filming taking place in and around Melbourne, where US troops camped in 1943, and multiple locations in Far North Queensland. Kary Antholis, Senior Vice President, HBO Films, is the executive in charge of the project. Five-time Emmy nominee Tim Van Patten will direct the first episode. The plot tracks the intertwined odysseys of three US Marines, Robert Leckie (played by James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and John Basilone (Jon Seda), from their first clash with the Japanese in the jungles of Guadalcanal, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted