George Lucas says Hollywood shuns black movies - NME.com

January 12, 2012 14:05

The director spent two decades self-funding the forthcoming 'Red Tails'

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George Lucas has claimed that Hollywood is reluctant to support black films.

The Star Wars director was speaking ahead of his new movie Red Tails, which he said took two decades to self-fund because of its all-black cast, and "no major white roles at all."

He told The Daily Show: "It's a reasonably expensive movie. Normally black movies, say Tyler Perry movies or something, they're very low budget. Even then, [the studios] won't really release his movies, it goes to one of the lower, not major distributors."

Lucas continued:

They don't believe there's any foreign market for it and that's 60% of their profit. I showed it to them and they said 'No, we don't know how to market a movie like this'.

Red Tails follows a crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program, having faced segregation while kept mostly on the ground during World War II. It stars Nate Parker, David Oleyowo and Ne-Yo.

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