Ken Burns’s THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Sets PBS Premiere

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, a new six-part, 12-hour documentary series that explores the country’s founding and its eight-year War for Independence, will premiere on Sunday, November 16 and air for six consecutive nights through Friday, November 21st at 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. The full series will be available to stream beginning Sunday, November 16 at PBS.org and on the PBS App.

The much-anticipated series, which has been in production for eight years, was directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward. The filmmakers and PBS scheduled the broadcast for 2025, the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION examines how America’s creation turned the world upside-down. Thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired centuries of democratic movements around the globe.

An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.

“The American REVOLUTION has always been surrounded by myth that keeps us from seeing the real picture,” said Ken Burns. “The story of the birth of this country is at once devastating and inspiring. It was a bloody civil war that divided families and communities, displaced native nations, both challenged and protected the institution of slavery, while also proclaiming the noblest aspirations of humankind.”

“Our film tells the remarkable history of the people who lived through the American Revolution, their everyday concerns, and their hopes, fears and failings,” said Sarah Botstein (THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST, HEMINGWAY, THE VIETNAM WAR). “It’s a surprising and deeply relevant story, one that is hugely important to understanding who we are as a country and a people. The REVOLUTION changed how we think about government – creating new ideas about liberty, freedom, and democracy.”

“The REVOLUTION was eight years of uncertainty, hope, and terror, a brutal war that engaged millions of people in NORTH AMERICA and beyond and left tremendous loss in its wake,” said David Schmidt

(BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE VIETNAM WAR). “At the same time, the REVOLUTION also changed how Americans thought about themselves, their government, and what they were capable of achieving. The United States that emerged from the war was a nation few could have imagined before the shooting began in April 1775.”

The REVOLUTION began a movement for people around the world to imagine new and better futures for themselves, their nations, and for humanity. It opened the door to advance civil liberties and human rights, and it asked questions that we are still trying to answer today. “I think to believe in America, rooted in the American Revolution, is to believe in possibility,” the historian Jane Kamensky says in the series. “Everybody, on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for.”

Kamensky is one of dozens of scholars and writers who appear in the film or advised the production, including Rick Atkinson, Friederike Baer, Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk, Darren Bonaparte, Christopher Leslie Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin G. Calloway, Stephen Conway, Iris de Rode, Philip J. Deloria, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph J. Ellis, Charles E. Frye, Annette Gordon-Reed, Don N. Hagist, William Hogeland, Maya Jasanoff, Edward G. Lengel, William E. Leuchtenberg, Jennifer Loren, Holly A. Mayer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jeffrey Rosen, Claudio Saunt, Barnet Schecter, Stacy Schiff, Alan Taylor, Michael John Witgen, Kevin J. Weddle, Gordon S. Wood, Serena Zabin, and the late Bernard Bailyn.

Burns’s long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward (THE VIETNAM WAR, JAZZ, BASEBALL, THE CIVIL WAR) wrote the script and is the author of the companion book, The American Revolution, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on November 11, 2025.

Led by the cinematographer Buddy Squires, the series features original footage that highlights the beauty and diversity of the North American landscape. The team shot in every season over the course of several years and at nearly a hundred locations, within and beyond the original 13 colonies, including at Colonial Williamsburg, Fort Ticonderoga, Minute Man National Historical Park, Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Mount Vernon, Valley Forge National Historical Park, the South Carolina backcountry, overseas in London and the English countryside, and elsewhere. The filmmakers also worked with extensive networks of reenactors to film troop movement and camp life.

The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, John Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, and Meryl Streep, among others.

The film uses a wide variety of music, both from the period and newly composed pieces for the series, with recordings by Johnny Gandelsman, Rhiannon Giddens, Jennifer Kreisberg, David Cieri, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Evans, and many more. In addition to using hundreds of 18th-century maps, the filmmakers

created and commissioned over a hundred new maps. There are also well over a thousand still images in the film, including paintings, letters, lithographs, and other archival materials, from museums, galleries, and libraries throughout the United States and abroad.

PBS and Florentine Films, Burns’s production company, will be working on outreach and engagement with a wide-range of national and local organizations focused on commemorating the country’s founding, including, the National Constitution Center, Colonial Williamsburg, America 250, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Parks Service, The National Archives, The Museum of the American Revolution, Monticello, Mount Vernon, the Aspen Institute, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, state and local 250 organizations, and many others.

Beginning in January 2025, the filmmakers will undertake a 25-plus market tour of the United States, holding screenings and having conversations with the general public, teachers, students and others, including events in: Richmond, VA (March 23), Williamsburg, VA (March 25), Boston, MA (April 16), Lexington and Concord, MA (April 17), Charleston, SC (May 14), Raleigh, NC (May 15), Atlanta, GA (May 18), Dallas, TX (June 3), Austin, TX (June 4), Houston, TX (June 5), Monticello/Charlottesville, VA (July 3), Manchester, NH (July 25), Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA (dates TBD in July), Saratoga/Albany, NY (September 10), Newark, NJ (September 17), Chicago, IL (September 25), Detroit, MI (September 26), Philadelphia, PA (October 9), New York, NY (fall TBD) and Washington, DC (October 29). Additional markets will be added for 2026. To stay up to date on specific event dates and details, go to pbs.org/americanrevolution.

In addition, PBS LearningMedia, working with WETA and other station partners and national and local organizations, will lead classroom outreach and develop digital resources and professional learning opportunities for educators and students in grades 3-12. These classroom resources and events will delve into the themes of the film, providing teaching tips, discussion questions, activity suggestions and digital content to enrich student learning and elevate teacher effectiveness and student achievement. The goal is to make this riveting history resonate with today’s youth, connecting past events to current realities.

Beyond the filmmakers’ tour, PBS and WETA will work within the public television network to help its more than 330 local stations to engage with new and diverse audiences through projects such as screening and discussion events, digital media workshops, local productions, websites, and new media broadcasts tailored to the needs of their own communities. WETA and PBS will provide stations with toolkits to help plan events and to ensure they are well-equipped with clip reels, discussion guides and customized print and digital assets. National and local partners will help to further expand the impact of the project. The education and engagement programs for the film were funded in part thanks to a grant from the Kern Family Foundation. Corporate funding for the film, along with additional support for outreach and engagement, was also provided by Burns’s long-time underwriter, Bank of America.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION will be available to stream on all station-branded PBS platforms including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. The series will also be available to stream on PBS Passport and the “PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.” PBS station members can view the documentary via PBS Passport as part of a full collection of Ken Burns films. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION will be distributed internationally by PBS International.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D.C. Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward. Produced by Sarah Botstein, David Schmidt, Salimah El-Amin and Ken Burns. Edited by Tricia Reidy, Maya Mumma, Charles E. Horton, and Craig Mellish. Co-Produced by Megan Ruffe and Mike Welt. Cinematography by Buddy Squires. Narrated by Peter Coyote. The executive in charge for WETA was John F. Wilson (who passed away in November of 2024). Executive producer is Ken Burns.

Corporate funding for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was provided by Bank of America. Major funding was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation; and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein; The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation; Lilly Endowment Inc.; and the following Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt; Stephen A. Schwarzman; and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was provided by: The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations; The Pew Charitable Trusts; Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling; Park Foundation; and the following Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg; Perry and Donna Golkin; The Michelson Foundation; Jacqueline B. Mars; Kissick Family Foundation; Diane and Hal Brierley; John H. N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell; John and Catherine Debs; The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund; Philip I. Kent; Gail Elden; Deborah and Jon Dawson; David and Susan Kreisman; The McCloskey Family Charitable Trust; Becky and Jim Morgan; Carol and Ned Spieker; Mark A. Tracy; and Paul and Shelley Whyte. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was made possible, in part, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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