We haven’t followed George Lucas’ first post-“Star Wars” project, “Red Tails,” pretty closely, because, well, we don’t care for Lucas much and it seems like the guy can never really break away from “Star Wars” related projects, but it seems like it’s finally happening and since Lucas is producing, not directing, this action drama about African-American fighter pilots in WWII, it could turn out to be halfway decent.
In October director Anthony Hemingway (episodes of “The Wire,” “CSI”) was hired, and on Friday Fox News said offers had gone out to Terrence Howard and R&B singer NeYo, Andre Royo (from “Oz”), Nate Parker (from “The Great Debaters”), British actor David Oyelowo, plus Barry Pepper (“Saving Private Ryan”) and Bryan Cranston (the father in “Malcolm in the Middle”).
Apparently actors like Derek Luke and Micheal Ealy were once under consideration, but are no longer so because of their involvement in the similarly themed Spike Lee’s African American WWII film, “Miracle At St. Anna.” Fox says, “Lucas and co. are said to be sensitive about not overlapping ” with Lee’s aforementioned picture. In development since 1990, and probably for Lucas to direct until he got waylaid with the SW Prequels, no studios are behind it yet, but the financiers of Lucas Film will probably have no problem finding a distributor. Hopefully he can find a bigger audience for his WWII African American story as ‘St. Anna’ was pretty much a disastrous bomb.
Apparently Lucas once asked Samuel L. Jackson if he was interested in directing ‘Tails’ according to the U.K. Telegraph.
“It’s a pretty good script,” Jackson told them. “At one point (Lucas) was asking me if I’d ever want to direct anything. I said, ‘I don’t know, man. I’m trying to find things.’ He said, ‘Well, let me send you this thing. Maybe you might want to direct it.'” Obviously this never came to pass.