and Follow us on 
*So far “Red Tails” is proving the naysayers wrong and is doing very well at the box office.
No, it most likely won’t end up being the number one film opening this weekend, but it’s far from bombing (no pun intended).
Here’s what Deadline is reporting as of 11pm (Pacific) Friday night:
Hollywood studios were stunned by how well the No. 2 film, George Lucas banner film Red Tails, did in matinees today. Until they discovered that the Lucasfilm/Twentieth Century Fox movie’s marketing inside the African-American community resulted in busloads of schoolkids and midday filmgoers for the Tuskegee airmen’s story. Right now the pic appears very frontloaded but could keep surprising by flying towards $20M because of its ‘A’ CinemaScore from audiences.
Here are the Top 5 estimated grosses:
1. Underworld Awakening (Sony Pictures) NEW [3,078 Theaters]
Estimated Friday $9.8M, Estimated Weekend $23.4M2. Red Tails (LucasFilm/Fox) NEW [2,512 Theaters]
Estimated Friday $6.2M, Estimated Weekend $17M3. Contraband (Universal) Week 2 [2,870 Theaters]
Estimated Friday $3.7M, Estimated Weekend $12.5M, Estimated Cume $46.2M4. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Warner Bros) Week 5 [2,630 Theaters]
Estimated Friday $3.2M, Estimated Weekend $9.5M, Estimated Cume $10M5. Haywire (Relativity) NEW [2,439 Theaters]
Estimated Friday $3M, Estimated Weekend $8.6M
Read the full report at Deadline.com.
I’m going to see it today! But before I go I’m going to call/text my boys in Detroit, Jersey and Milwaukee and tell them all to go see it as soon as possible.
One more thing, all white people are not created equall…George Lucas gets madd props for making this film happen. He didn’t need this film, he got road blocked through the whole process of getting it made. He consulted with the surviving Tuskegee Airmen for authenticity and approval. Dude put a black director in charge of the set the way it should be to chronicle this history.
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Well, so far my predictions are holding up. Earlier in the week, I said I saw it breaking in the top three alongside Underworld and Contraband, hitting the $20M mark.
“Hollywood studios were stunned by how well the No. 2 film”
Bullshit. They knew a good black movie would do well at the box office. They always have. And with George Lucas behind it, it would be A+.
The reason why it’s difficult to acquire funding for black movies is just straight up racism, especially if it’s something that combats racial stereotyping. It has nothing to do with making a profit.
Them crackas want you to believe that a black man won’t make a good pilot even now. They don’t want the word to get out that blacks were aces from way back then.
They want that shit to be confined to the pages, where they can say it was a myth, urban legends. It’s OK if Spike makes a movie like that. They can then pass it off as a black man giving an exaggerated tall tale about his race. But when someone like George Lucas brings it, there is nowhere to hide. That’s why they wanted to stop it, keep it locked away in a box, no mass exposure.
Them crackas will do anything to delegitimize the black man and his accomplishments.
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Please understand what I am about to say is not intended to dispute that black movies are profitable or that racism has always been a factor in Hollywood. I’ll concede right now that I don’t work in show business so my knowledge is limited.
Ok, even if black movies are routinely profitable they are profitable like a good R&B performer. So, lets say most black movies are like Jill Scott. Lots of talent and decent profit margins within their demographic. Rarely are these movies like Jay-Z, a cross over phenomena. Lucas said in an interview that Red Tails has to break out of the “black movie” ( the quotes are mine not his) profitability so that he can get two more films on this subject green lighted. Cold hard facts are that for that to happen white folks gotta be in many of those seats. At the end of the day the people running Hollywood only care about one thing…dollar, dollar bill y’all.
By the way, went to an afternoon showing, great story, very healthy attendence and I estimate the audience was about 40% white.
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I just can’t agree with any notion that movies with a predominantly black cast historically doesn’t do well at the box office or are only routinely profitable. Over the years, I have always been pleasantly surprised at how successful black movies have been at the box office. And all the data seems to support that notion. For example, Ranker.com has this to say about black movies. “African American movies often dominate the box office when released ….” Just looking at movies over the years like Coming to America, The Color Purple, Harlem Nights, Boyz n the Hood, Bad Boys, Soul Food, Waiting to Exhale, …
I remember when I heard about the first Tyler Perry movie, “Diary of a mad black woman”, I was very skeptical about how it would perform at the box office. The critics were saying it would not succeed, because Perry’s audience was limited to black people. But its success and all his following moves proved how appealing black moves are to the public in general.
The problem that George Lucas ran into in funding this movie may be a combination of racism and prejudice. No, they are not necessarily the same. The racist in Hollywood will be opposed to funding black movies, because they don’t want to see anything black succeed. The prejudice comes from people who just can’t bring themselves to accepting that black people are able to perform at the same level as whites, no matter how much evidence is presented. They are the type of people who won’t hire a black engineer, even though he graduated from MIT with honors. They will tell themselves that he got that degree because the professors were easier on him than the white students. So even with all the data showing black movies succeeding at the box office, the will somehow convince themselves that it was a fluke.
Racial prejudice is a motha.
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