Source: TheForce.net | Digital Spy | First Showing | The Playlist

For those of you not in the know, George Lucas has been hard at work lately. Not only is he very involved with The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network, he is also executive producer for the upcoming film Red Tails – a film that he has been wanting to get made for years now about the first African American WWII fighter pilots.

First Showing.net posted a story recently that George Lucas is not happy with the material that Red Tails director, Anthony Hemingway, has shot thus far and that the film needs to go through major re-writes and re-shoots that would drastically affect the characters and plot. Not only that, but Lucas would have to direct these re-shoots himself! Well, Lucasfilm says this is just not true, according to an article on Digital Spy.

The story that is circulating about production on Red Tails is completely inaccurate,” Lucasfilm told DS.

“George Lucas and Rick McCallum are very pleased with the work Anthony Hemingway did directing the film and additional shooting that is scheduled to take place was built into production before it began, as it is on all our films.”

Well, that puts these rumors to rest, wouldn’t you say?

Red Tails stars Cuba Gooding Jr. and is due out some time this year.

Update: The Playlist has just posted more info regarding these reshoots. Yes, George Lucas will be directing the reshoots (with Rick McCallum overseeing them), but only because Hemmingway is not available to do them. Hemmingway is off directing an HBO show called Treme, and is unavailable for the reshoots.

I suppose this means that Hemmingway was slated to direct the film, but not scheduled in for reshoots if they were necessary. It seems kind of odd to me that he wouldn’t be slated for the whole thing, but I guess this is just how they organized this particular picture.

Perhaps Lucas did not want to wait for Hemmingway to finish Treme and decided to finish the film himself? Or maybe there is something fishy going on that Lucasfilm doesn’t want us to know about. Either way, there is really no real confirmation as to why Hemmingway wasn’t penciled in for the whole thing.