"Red Tails," a film about the challenges and heroism of Florida's own African-American Tuskegee Airmen of WWII, opens in South Florida theaters January 20.

The launch of this new action film is important, however, not just for chronicling the stories of these celebrated American heroes. Success at the box-office will also prove the commercial universality of Black American life.

"Red Tails," which stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Ne-Yo, David Oyelowo and Nate Parker and is produced by George Lucas of Star Wars and Indiana Jones fame, has been a labor of love for the American director for 23 years. The project was born out of Lucas' desire to make a film featuring American role models for young audience members.

"They are really the knights of the contemporary age," Lucas said in a statement about the Tuskegee Airmen.

The Star Wars creator invested $58 million of his own money into the movie, after the film project struggled for support from Hollywood studios.

The main concern for Hollywood producers, said Lucas in an interview with "the Daily Show," was how to market a big-budget, all-Black film to American and global markets.

"They don't believe there's any foreign market for it and that's 60 percent of their profit... I showed it to all of them and they said 'No. We don't know how to market a movie like this.'" Lucas quoted the producers. "It's an all-Black movie. There's no major white role in it at all. It's one of the first, all-Black action pictures ever made."

And from brief glimpses in the "Red Tails" trailer, the film promises the same iconic American heroics befitting the "Star Wars" creator – sweeping aerial shots, powerful friendships, sheer bravery and most of all, universally inspiring heroes.

That these real life Han Solos might just be sitting beside you in a South Florida theater makes their accomplishment, defending both their countrymen and their civil rights of equality, all the more inspiring.