New York City’s annual Fleet Week is so iconic that it was immortalized on an episode of Sex and the City — but the Port of Los Angeles’ 3-year-old version (Aug. 31 to Sept. 3), which is chaired for 2018 by Mayor Eric Garcetti and Wallis Annenberg, hasn’t had much pull with Hollywood.
Until now, that is: Amazon will hold the U.S. premiere of ?one of its splashiest productions yet — Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski — aboard the Battleship Iowa on ?Aug. 31 (the same day the drama’s eight episodes roll out online). In an unprecedented event for the floating San Pedro museum, an auditorium for on deck for an audience that will include — along with the show’s stars and creators and execs from streamer — a few hundred service members from the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. The screening will be visible from the pier for some members of the public, who can also catch the fireworks to follow.
“Getting to share this night with members of the military and their families aboard the USS Iowa is an honor, and makes an already special evening even more special,” says series co-creator Graham Roland, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq in the mid 2000s before becoming a writer on Prison Break, Lost and other shows. “Yes, it is the culmination of three and a half years of hard work,” he adds of the drama. “But more importantly, it is a recognition and token of our endless gratitude for the heroism and sacrifice of the men and women in uniform that Tom Clancy loved to write about, the real heroes who keep us safe and allow us to have nights like this one.”
Along with Krasinski and fellow cast members including Wendell Pierce, Dina Shahibi and Ali Suliman, Roland and co-creator Carlton Cuse and Amazon execs Vernon Sanders and Albert Cheng all will climb aboard to take in the pilot episode, which also will be screened throughout the weekend at the Warner Grand Theater as part the official L.A. Fleet Week Navy Film Festival celebrating 100 Years of the Navy in Hollywood.
Also free to 5,000 Fleet Week attendees Sept. 1: a sold-out Beach Boys concert, presented by the Annenberg Foundation and featuring honorary bandmember John Stamos on drums.
A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
