Wednesday, June 18, 2008

by Ari

I'm pleasantly surprised to read that George Lucas is finally in pre-production for the first of those "small, personal art films" he's been talking about for the last quarter century. He and producer Rick McCallum are scouting locations for Red Tails, a film about the Tuskegee airmen. They hope to begin filming later this year or early 2009, so I assume it'll be released some time in 2010. While it's clearly not as idiosyncratic as something like THX-1138, it's still a Lucas film WITHOUT "Star Wars" in the title. I'm sort of amazed it's really happening. Could this be the first step of a major artistic comeback for the once visionary director? I seriously hope so. And just in case you were wondering, Lucas hired a different screenwriter to adapt the story.