RED TAILS

Red Tails

George Lucas sunk $58 million of his vast fortune into the production for Red Tails and an additional $35 million to distribute and market through Fox. While promoting the poorly reviewed film, Lucas lamented that no studio would finance a film staring an all black cast, because the foreign market would reject the film. Red Tails was barely released theatrically outside the US and made $478,899 in the UK and $10k in Croatia. The film pulled in soft, but decent enough numbers in the US, but not nearly enough to offset that lack of a proper release outside of the states. Red Tails opened with a solid $18,782,154 — placing #2 for the weekend, behind opener Underworld Awakening. Despite awful reviews, audiences gave the film a solid A cinemascore and it declined 44.8% in its second weekend to $10,370,323 and Red Tails fell 54.3% in its third frame to $4,735,595. It closed its run with $49,876,377 of which Lucas saw back about $27.5 million after theaters take their cut and Fox would get a fee for releasing the film through their distribution channel. The billionaire, who took over directing duties for reshoots he demanded, took a sizable loss but completed his decades old dream project and decent home video sales at $22 million (less after resellers take their cut and manufacturing costs) padded his loss.