After becoming a film-making legend who brought us both the STAR WARS saga, as well as the inimitable INDIANA JONES, George Lucas says that he is done making blockbuster films, wanting to go back to making the kind of small, personal films he made in the 1960s and early 1970s, before STAR WARS propelled him into the stratosphere. Speaking to Bryan Curtis from the New York Times, Lucas said: “I’m retiring. I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”
The statement comes after his latest project, as executive producer for RED TAILS, directed by TREME and FRINGE alumnus Anthony Hemingway, was rejected by all the major Hollywood studios, forcing Lucas to fund the entire production and distribution himself. The film tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the United States’ first all-black aviation combat unit, who are finally called into duty under Colonel A. J. Bullard, played by Terrence Howard (LAW & ORDER: LOS ANGELES). The film also features Bryan Cranston (BREAKING BAD), Cuba Gooding Jr. (JERRY MAGUIRE) and musician Ne-Yo (BATTLE LOS ANGELES).
Lucas faced trouble trying to find studio backing for the project, which has been in planning since the early 1990s, originally suggested as a three-part epic. Curtis writes:
One studio’s executives didn’t even show up for the screening. “Isn’t this their job?” Lucas says, astonished. “Isn’t their job at least to see movies? It’s not like some Sundance kid coming in there and saying, ‘I’ve got this little movie — would you see it?’ If Steven (Spielberg) or I or Jim Cameron or Bob Zemeckis comes in there, and they say, ‘We don’t even want to bother to see it…’ ”
Lucas sighs. It’s true that the movie, “Red Tails,” is a biopic about the Tuskegee Airmen rather than a space opera starring the Skywalker clan. But the snub implied that Lucas’s pop-culture collateral — six “Star Wars” movies, four “Indiana Jones” movies, the effects shop Industrial Light and Magic and toy licenses that were selling (at least) four different light sabers this Christmas — was basically worthless. When “Red Tails” opens in theaters on Jan. 20, it will be because Lucas paid for everything, including the prints.
Source: The New York Times
Lucas’s STAR WARS: EPISODE ONE – THE PHANTOM MENACE is re-released in 3D nationwide 9th February 2012. No UK release date has been set for RED TAILS.
