Lucas hires Red writer

I may catch some flak for claiming that the last good idea George Lucas had was letting other people make EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (okay, maybe putting Carrie Fisher in a slave bikini), but it’s always a relief to see him let people with actual writing talent handle future projects. Perhaps he’s picking up subliminal commands from those of us with high midichlorian counts. Ha.

For his upcoming WWII action movie RED TAILS, Lucas has enlisted the services of John Ridley, writer of novels, screenplays and comics. Ridley (who got the gig after impressing Lucas with his LA RIOTS script for Spike Lee) will tell the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black pilots assembled as a wartime publicity stunt who ended up proving themselves as an elite fighter group. Lucas is financing and producing the long-planned movie through Lucasfilm, with ILM handling the airspace action.

Ridley also created UNDERCOVER BROTHER and penned the original script for THREE KINGS, and his novel “Stray Dogs” was adapted into Oliver Stone’s U-TURN.