There has been no conflict quite like World War II, and when one goes through the annals of human history, that becomes abundantly clear, pretty quickly. So far, it has been a tremendous year for fans of World War II movies and shows, as there has been significant number of new projects on screens both big and small. At the turn of the year, Prime Video offered us the opportunity to see the conflict through Nazi eyes with its sleeper hit The Tank. Maintaining that trend, at about the same time, Hermann Wilhelm Göring was the center of attention as the digital debut of Nuremberg, the 2025 sleeper hit that grossed $70 million at the box office, came to streaming. Starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, Nuremberg emerged as a fan-favorite away from the big screen as more projects advanced.
As summer rolled in across the Northern Hemisphere, director Rod Lurie‘s Lucky Strike got its theatrical release in late June. While the film endured a disappointing box office run, grossing $1.5 million against a reported budget of $10 million. Lucky Strike turned to the PVOD market to salvage the situation, and it did, outperforming the horror movie Passenger, the Hugh Jackman-led period drama The Death of Robin Hood, and Guy Ritchie‘s action movie In the Grey. Centered on the Battle of the Bulge, the movie follows a soldier who is stranded behind enemy lines armed with nothing but his tenacity and a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. The film stars Scott Eastwood and Colin Hanks. However, just before the end of spring, Hollywood’s preeminent World War II aficionado, one whose son starred in Lucky Strike, dropped a gripping docu-series on humanity’s deadliest conflict.
On May 25, 2026, Tom Hanks returned to his fascination and decades-old passion for WWII history, with the documentary series titled World War II with Tom Hanks. Hanks’ career has seen him star in World War II movies such as Saving Private Ryan and Greyhound. The docu-series premiered with three episodes on Memorial Day. Overall, World War II with Tom Hanks consists of 20 episodes, with the last batch arriving on July 27. Done in collaboration with the History Channel, the series has gone on to become a streaming hit, dominating global streaming charts according to FlixPatrol. The series has flirted with the Amazon top 10 in the United States, while its standing on the Apple TV Store is far more revered, with comfortable top 10 standings in Australia, Canada, and the United States.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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What Is ‘World War II with Tom Hanks’ About?
With Hanks serving as narrator, World War II with Tom Hanks spans the entirety of the Second World War, beginning with the unexpected invasion of Poland. The conquest of much of Western Europe is covered, even as the Axis Powers emerge and unite, with the conflict taking on a global feel. Adolf Hitler‘s expansion into Joseph Stalin‘s Soviet territory with Operation Barbarossa, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which effectively brings America into the conflict, among a host of other plots are explored. World War II with Tom Hanks covers World War II across land, air, and sea, even as the spotlight focuses on the world leaders of the time: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, Erwin Rommel, Hideki Tojo, and the Nazi leader, Hitler.
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