George Lucas Retires From Blockbusters But Will Still Make Indiana Jones 5
"I'm retiring... I'm moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff."
67 year-old Star Wars creator George Lucas claims he is retiring from big budget filmmaking and that Red Tails (which opens in the US on Friday) will be his last big project at Lucasfilm. This actually isn't as big a story as you would think as Lucas has retired several times before only to find that itch to make $100 million blockbusters again. If you asked Lucas in the mid '80s as to whether he would make another three more Star Wars films he would laugh in your face. Indeed he is still planning a fifth Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg sometime this decade, a live-action Star Wars TV show that he wants to go at least 100 episodes, 3D conversions of the rest of the Star Wars movies and most likely more of the Clone Wars cartoon. So what does his retirement actually mean? "I'm retiring," he said to The New York Times, "I'm moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff." Red Tails producer Rick McCallum added; "Once this is finished, hes done everything hes ever wanted to do," producer Rick McCallum added. "He will have completed his task as a man and a filmmaker." Lucas claims he will devote the rest of his time to small personal projects, films like American Graffiti and THX 1138 that he made in the 1970s. The Times say; Theyll be small in scope, esoteric in subject and screened mostly in art houses. Theyll be like the experimental movies Lucas made in the 1960s, around the time he was at U.S.C. film school, when he recorded clouds moving over the desert and made a movie based on an E. E. Cummings poem." So what Lucas really means is that the problems he had getting Red Tails off the ground has kicked him in the ass where he even had to put his own money towards getting it made when few studios would touch it. The movie he originally had in his head so many years ago was so much grander in scope than the film that opens in theaters on Friday. Something much grander, like the World War II movies of the Hollywood golden era. In the end he didn't even end up directing it. Lucas says I cant make that movie... Im going to have make this kind of...entertainment movie. Directed by TV helmer Anthony Hemingway with some re-shoots by Lucas himself when Hemingway was busy with Treme (production started in 2009 and had a few breaks), Red Tails is based on the true stories of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all African-American aerial combat unit and their heroic adventures during World War II. The impressive ensemble cast includes Terrence Howard, NeYo, Andre Royo, Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Cuba Gooding Jr, Bryan Cranston, Method Man and more. 20th Century Fox release it tomorrow.