Filmmaker George Lucas is known for his work on the blockbuster franchises Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The franchises made Lucas one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. However, despite his decades of work in Hollywood, the filmmaker had to endure an extremely humiliating situation when trying to launch one of his rare non-Star Wars movies.
Lucas executive produced the 2012 biographical war drama film Red Tails, under his Lucasfilm banner. The film failed to secure the backing of any major studio, resulting in Lucas financing and producing the movie completely independently. However, the director was humiliated by studio executives when he tried to shop around the project, and here is what happened.
George Lucas Faced Humiliating Reaction From a Studio Executive on His Non-Star Wars Movie
George Lucas gained fame for his underrated coming-of-age drama American Graffiti. He changed the face of blockbuster filmmaking with 1977’s Star Wars, launching one of the most successful franchises of all time. Despite producing some of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Lucas was unable to sell his 2012 war film Red Tails to major studios.
During an interview with The New York Times, Lucas revealed the executives of a major film studio refused to even watch the movie let alone acquire it for distribution. He said:
Isn’t this their job? Isn’t (it) their job at least to see movies? It’s not like some Sundance kid coming in there.
Lucas made the above statement, expressing his astonishment at the treatment he received from the executives. Moreover, the filmmaker noted that he wasn’t a no-name producer and all his goodwill amounted to nothing when trying to shop around Red Tails.
In a separate interview, Lucas spoke about how studios turned down the project because it had an African-American main cast. The filmmaker revealed that studios felt such a movie was unmarketable in the international markets, which was a major revenue stream for the studios. As a result, despite his illustrious filmography, Lucas was ignored when trying to secure distribution for Red Tails.
George Lucas Was Already Planning to Retire When Red Tails Flopped at the Box Office
Eventually, Red Tails was financed with Lucas’ own money, including its print and advertising costs. The film stars Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. in the lead roles and explores the Tuskegee Airmen’s experiences during the Second World War. It was made on a reported budget of $58 million but received mixed reviews from critics.
Furthermore, the film emerged as a box-office disappointment, failing to recoup its cost of production. It made $50.4 million at the box office, proving that the studios were at least somewhat right in avoiding the project. However, the film’s financial failure wasn’t the reason Lucas decided to step away from blockbuster filmmaking.
I’m retiring. I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.
Lucas made the above statement in the aforementioned interview, expressing his plans to retire even before the film was released.
A few months after the film’s release, Lucas sold his company, Lucasfilm to Disney and has since been semi-retired. As a result, Lucas wasn’t involved with the sequel trilogy of Star Wars movies. However, the humiliating treatment he received from studios during the production of Red Tails, only justified the filmmaker’s decision to step away from the movie-making business.
Red Tails is streaming on Disney+.
