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In the tradition of their award-winning collaborations “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers,” Tom Hanks’s and Steven Spielberg’s miniseries “The Pacific” revisits the visceral and brutal action of ground-level combat during World War II, the heroes that came out of it and the bonds that were formed by brothers in arms.

To launch the miniseries in the region, HBO Asia, which will air the first one-hour episode on Saturday, held a press screening of “Making ‘The Pacific’ ” in Menteng last week.

Officials of the cable network said the series took two years to film and involved 800 crew members, 138 speaking roles and the construction of 90 sets, with postproduction of 20 months. With a $200 million price tag, “The Pacific” is the most expensive HBO miniseries ever produced.

“The production cost is about the same as the second ‘Transformers’ movie,” said Karen Lai, HBO Asia’s director of communications.

Told from the perspective of three American Marines, “The Pacific” is based on two memoirs — “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa,” written by Eugene Sledge (1981), and “Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific,” by Robert Leckie (1957). Two of the main characters were based on Sledge and Leckie, who served as privates during the war.

The third major character was inspired by the experiences of gunnery Sgt. John Basilone, the son of Italian immigrants who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits in the Battle of Guadalcanal and the Navy Cross after his death in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

In “Making ‘The Pacific,’” Hanks said the objective of the miniseries was to shed light on the conflict between American and Japanese troops in far-flung islands, like Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Peleliu. Similar to their first HBO miniseries about World War II, “Band of Brothers” in 2001, Hanks and Spielberg, who executive produced “The Pacific” with Gary Goetzman, used first-hand accounts as the backbone of their storytelling.

“The Pacific” also captures combat action in shock realism — the gore of death in the time of war and the hostile environment facing the men on the field. Like in Hanks’s and Spielberg’s previous critically acclaimed productions on the atrocities of war, the attention to detail in “The Pacific” is flawless.

For the Battle of Iwo Jima, the crew had to excavate more than 62,000 tons of soil to build sets on location in Australia. Some 4,000 tons of black scoria, a kind of stone formed from lava, was also used to create volcanic sand. Set designers also molded 750 pieces of coral for the scenes in Peleliu and poured 650 cubic meters of concrete to build hills and caves.

Indonesian film director and producer Nia Dinata, who has seen the first episode of “The Pacific,” was in awe of the production and at the same time touched by the humanity fleshed out on screen.

“It begins with the soldiers leaving their families and their loved ones because of the call of war. They didn’t even know who they were going to fight,” Nia said, adding that the viewers would feel the money was well spent on the elaborate production.

Nia also said the miniseries format was a good way for filmmakers to express their vision.

“In ‘The Pacific,’ it is Hanks and Spielberg who were mad enough to adapt these stories and present them to the viewers,” she said, adding that the producers were able to inject their own opinion about war but did not veer from historical accuracy.

HBO Asia will air the first episode of “The Pacific” in Indonesia, at 8 p.m., on April 3. It will feature Indonesian subtitles and an option for Indonesian dubbing.