Over the weekend I attended the international press day for “Charlie Wilson’s War” as a reporter for the website Omelete.com (Collider’s partner in

Brazil). In covering the junket for Omelete, I was able to attend a press conference with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, & Mike Nichols (the director). In the coming weeks I’ll be posting a transcript of what was said, but in keeping with posting the highlights immediately, this next bit is for all you fans of “Band of Brothers.”

If you didn’t know, Tom Hanks is producing a sequel to the highly successful mini-series and it’s called “The Pacific.” While “Band of Brothers” took place in Europe, the new show takes place in - just like the title suggests - the pacific. “Pacific” is scheduled to air in 2009 and except for the little bits of casting news that has been announced, I hadn’t seen or heard Tom Hanks talk about the new show yet.

So after the press conference ended, I leapt out of my seat with the hopes of talking to one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. I was trying to find out what he was working on now that “Angels and Demons” had been put on hold due to a non-workable shooting script. Also, as a huge fan of “Band of Brothers,” I was going to ask him about the show, but he brought it up on his own.

While there is nothing major in what he said, he did give an update as to where they are now in production and how it’ll be different from the first series. And if you’d like to listen to the exchange, you can click here for the MP3.

Look for a full transcript in the coming weeks.

Collider: Could I please ask what you’re working on now or getting ready to work on?

Tom Hanks: Nothing. There’s nothing going on.

Collider: So without “Angels and Demons” it’s just…

Tom Hanks: No, I’m producing stuff. Pacific is going on in Australia. We’ve got John Adams in the editing room. We’ve got a lot of stuff still being done.

Collider: I was going to ask you specifically about “The Pacific”. How is that going?

Tom Hanks: It’s half-way done. There are going to be 10 hours in there I think we just started our 5th hour down there.

Collider: And how would you compare it to “Band of Brothers”?

Tom Hanks: It has to be different because it just can’t be the same theme. It’s not as clean as “Band of Brothers”. “Band of Brothers” came from Ambrose’s book and we bought 4 or 5 books and they were like…we just happened to be able to intersect them. And we can’t just go back and re-create World War II one more time. You have to make it a much more personal saga and also the nature of warfare in the South Pacific was so different than say liberating Holland. So it’s going to be tougher. It’s going to be a hard…I mean to watch…it’s going to be a harder series.

Collider: I was going to ask making “Band of Brothers” what did you take from that to apply to making “Pacific”?

Tom Hanks: Well the great treasure is in the details. It’s not about maps and tactics or ultimate moments. It’s about individual guys who find out that they can do things when they’re exhausted and that they can do things when they’re scared. Sometimes what they can do is curl up in a ball and not do anything and other times go off and carry somebody to safety or kill a guy. You know, those are all momentous moments in anybody’s life and that’s what the details are…that’s what’s important about any story about, I think, war is that you come down to a moment where some kid has been trained to do something and it’s not a pleasant thing that he has to do.