Tom Hanks Can’t Stop Making WWII Content — and His New Series Just Got Better

Tom Hanks has now made more WWII content than most history professors, and he’s apparently not done thinking about why.

Three new episodes of his documentary series World War II With Tom Hanks just dropped, adding to what has become one of the most personal projects of his career. The series airs on Sky History, and Collider called it a must-watch for anyone who’s followed his decades-long relationship with the subject.

“When I was a kid, every adult I knew shared one thing in common,” Hanks says at the top of the series — and from there it builds into exactly the kind of expansive, immersive documentary you’d expect from the man who produced Band of Brothers and Masters of the Air.

Why He Keeps Going Back

In a recent interview, Hanks reflected on his first WWII project — being cast in Saving Private Ryan in 1998 — and what’s kept him returning ever since. “I’ve been wrestling with this just recently,” he said, trying to articulate why the war continues to give him “poetry, solace and enlightenment.”

It’s a fair question. Between Saving Private Ryan, The Pacific, Band of Brothers, Masters of the Air, Greyhound, and now this documentary series, Hanks has spent more of his career exploring the Second World War than almost any other filmmaker or actor working today. The answer, he suggests, has something to do with how the war shaped the adults who shaped him — a generational through-line that he’s still tracing.

Meanwhile, Greyhound Is Having a Moment

Separately, his 2020 Apple TV+ film Greyhound — a lean, efficient naval thriller that got lost in the pandemic shuffle — is apparently back in heavy rotation on the platform. If you’ve never seen it, the new episodes of the documentary series are a good reminder to fix that.