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BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The movie "Red Tails" tells the story of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen armed forces fighter pilots who were the first black pilots to serve in combat. Executive producer George Lucas said his film has been in development for 23 years.
But Lucas said he couldn’t get major Hollywood studios to promote his movie because it was not “green” enough. He said they didn’t feel the earning potential for black films was high enough.
“It's one of the first all-black action pictures ever made," Lucas said, according to grio.com. “There are no major white roles in it at all.” Lucas funded $58 million of the film’s budget himself.
Lucas’ film has gotten some buzz from a very unlikely place. It turns out Alabama’s Crimson Tide got to see a screening of "Red Tails" before they won the BCS National Championship on Monday.
According to zap2it.com, Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban said he would recommend the film to anyone in his postgame press conference.
“Those guys' motto was 'to the last plane, the bullet, the last man, the minute we fight and we always stay with the mission.' And I think that that also describes the spirit of the group of players that we have this year," Sabin said.
One "Red Tails" star, Cuba Gooding Jr., also starred in the 1995 HBO film Tuskegee Airmen, about the same fighter pilots. Gooding said, according to pbpulse.com, “I don’t care if you’re black, white, whatever, you feel proud to know that our country has created such warriors. This movie is my love letter to the men and women in our armed services.”
According to the Urban Daily, the 67-year old Lucas admitted that studios will be less likely to take on movies by black moviemakers directed at black audiences if his film doesn’t bring in money.
Lucas told the New York Daily News, “This is trying to prove that black is green.”
The movie’s cast includes Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard and Ne-Yo, director Anthony Hemingway, and screenwriter, John Ridley.
"Red Tails" opens on January 20.
