It's Just Movies

— by CAM SMITH —

George Lucas has been a man about town these last few weeks. Hyping his hefty — and apparently excellent — new tome “George Lucas’s Blockbusting” (which was written by author/journalist Alex Ben Block, but features truck-loads of fascinating insight from Big Daddy Jedi himself), he’s been floating all sorts of tidbits regarding some juicy producing projects in the metaphorical pipeline.

While he’s confirmed that “Red Tails,” his Terrence Howard/Cuba Gooding Jr.-starring World War II film adventure based on the true life exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen, is nearing the end of production under director Antony Hemingway — a TV vet and former assistant AD taking on his first big-screen helming effort – some tantalizing buzz has filtered out regarding a whole other kettle of filmic fish.

Seems that ‘ol Georgie will be teaming up with “TMNT” director Kevin Munroe to create an all-CG musical featuring fairies. Yes, you read that right: fairies. Like Tinkerbell or Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, I suppose.

As described by The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, the project will be scripted by “Elf” and “Spiderwick Chronicles” scribe David Berenbaum and likely enter production after Munroe finishes post-production and press duties for “Dead of Night,” the impending “Dylan Dog” comic-book adaptation starring former “Superman” Brandon Routh and Taye Diggs.

It’s far too early to really speculate on what exactly the film will ultimately turn out like, as we have barely a crumb’s worth of information to go off of. It is nice, however, to see Lucas working in a non-“Indiana Jones” or “Star Wars” arena and hopefully these projects turn out more like his better producing efforts like “Willow” or “The Land Before Time” — as opposed to “Radioland Murders” or, dare I utter, “Howard the Duck”…

Frankly, I’d just like to see Lucas build up his confidence outside of his usual franchise-heavy comfort zone and start directing some innovative original films once again. The man made “THX-1138” and “American Graffiti,” after all, and it would be nice to see that George reappear once more before it’s too late.

Follow Cam Smith on Twitter at http://twitter.com/camspcepisodes.