Hollywood won't support 'an all-black movie', says George Lucas

George Lucas has revealed that he had to self-fund his movie, 'Red Tails', as he believes that Hollywood won't support 'an all black movie'.

It took 20 years for Lucas to get his latest film made, which is the real story of a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II.

Speaking on The Daily Show, Lucas claimed major film studios would not back the movie because "there's no major white roles in it at all".

"I showed it to all of them and they said, 'No. We don't know how to market a movie like this,'" the BBC quoted Lucas as saying.

"They don't believe there's any foreign market for it, and that's 60 percent of their profit," he stated.

Lucas invested 58 million dollars of his own money into the movie, which has been directed by Anthony Hemingway.

And he is investing a further 35 million dollars towards the distribution costs, according to trade paper The Hollywood Reporter.

"It's a reasonably expensive movie," Lucas said.

"Normally black movies, say Tyler Perry movies or something, they're very low budget.

"Even then, the [Hollywood studios] won't really release his movies, it goes to one of the lower, not major distributors," he added.

Red Tails has been produced and co-written by Lucas. It will be released by his company Lucasfilm, and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.