Source:RogerEbert.com, ComingSoon.net

September 24, 2008

You never know what you'll get out of Spike Lee when you interview him, but one thing some might not expect is for him to let slip one of the directors that George Lucas might be considering or have hired to direct his long-awaited war movie Red Tails about the Tuskegee Airmen.

ComingSoon.net spoke to Mr. Lucas back in March (that interview) when he told us he wanted to move forward with his dream project. Since then, there have been rumors of various directors including Samuel L. Jackson, who was thinking of making Red Tails his directorial debut.

Earlier this month, legendary film critic Roger Ebert interviewed Spike Lee up in Toronto and the full transcript of that interview was posted on his site.

During the interview, Lee talks about meeting the Buffalo Soldiers on which his new movie Miracle at St. Anna were based, and he mentioned also meeting some of the Tuskegee Airmen. While talking about them, he also brought up Lucas' long-time dream project and the fact that a young African-American director named Anthony Hemingway would be directing it. Here is the excerpt:

It was like eight men at the roundtable. And two of ‘em, Lee Archer and Roscoe Brown, was the 8th pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen, which I might add, this spring George Lucas is finally doin’ his Tuskegee Airmen film, “Redtails." He’s gonna produce it and a young African- American director, Anthony Hemingway, is gonna direct it. He’s done several episodic TVs, and is a young director so I’m looking forward to that and hopefully “Miracle” with “Redtails” coming’ up will generate more films to show the untold story about the participation. A lot of people know about fact that the Nisei, they were Japanese American unit that fought in Europe, an all Japanese-American unit that fought in Europe for United States of America against the Nazis. That movie’s never been done either so there’s a whole lot of stuff.

While we know better than to trust one director talking about another director's project, it's an interesting choice for Lucas if he does indeed go with Anthony Hemingway. You can check out Anthony Hemingway's bio and filmography over at IMDB, and it's fairly impressive in terms of the TV shows he's directed and his 2nd Unit work.

Stay tuned for further developments or any word confirming that Hemingway is in fact directing Red Tails.