CT Will Disney Re-Release Theatrical Cut Of The Original Trilogy?

If the OOT were (hopefully) released, what I'd like to know is whether or not the soundtrack would be one of the original sound mixes from the theatrical releases or new remixes (which has been the case on most previous home video releases)

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/att-time-warner-ruling.html

 

Hopefully the federal government paves the way for even further media conglomeration leading to a future where a handful of megacorporations can exercise even greater control over everything that reaches our eyes and ears....all so Han Solo can shoot first again in my favorite pew pew laser movies. Fingers crossed.

 

I don’t see it being released at least until 2027 for the 50th perhaps?

 

They will elect a new federal government. A stronger federal government. One who will not let this tragedy continue

 

As far as Pablo Hidalgo is aware, and I'm assuming the man is in a position to know, the only thing preventing the release of the OOT is Lucas. Not Disney/Fox refusing to play ball, or Disney waiting until all the chips are in their basket and theirs alone, or the O-Neg no longer existing in its original state. Just Lucas' desire for his final cuts of the films to be the only versions on the market, meaning the earliest we'd see the OOT is either A) if he magically changes his mind, or B) he dies. And as much as I'd like to have the OOT together in a nice 4k set, I'd much rather keep Lucas around as long as humanly possible. At the end of the day, that matters far more to me.

 

That's my guess as well.

If they were going to release them it would have happened as part of the campaign for TFA. So, the hold up is either technical (the prints are just in too bad a shape to release) or it's Lucas.

I think it's probably Lucas so we might see them once he leaves us but it won't be happening anytime soon.

 

I agree it was Lucas but now Disney is waiting till they get the rights back for A New Hope. My guess is (assuming they buy Fox) they will release them in a huge 4k box after Ep9 comes out.

 

No like, this is something Hidalgo commented on recently. Last year, in November/December or whenever it first got out that Disney was looking to buy Fox, a bunch of people bombarded him with questions asking him if this meant an OOT release was imminent. That's when he said that regardless of who owned the distribution rights to what, the only thing that could get the OOT released was Lucas' approval, which I don't think it's going to happen. It hurts me a little, but less and less every day. It's high past time to move on and accept the reality of the situation.

 

There's so many conflicting reports though. Pablo did imply that Lucas was holding it back. But someone who worked on the Lowry restoration (Vidiot on the Steve Hoffman forums) recalls that Lucas personally told him that the reason they hadn't restored the OOT was due to time and money; and this is corroborated by Lucas' own public quotes on the matter back when he was asked about it in 2010. And Mike Verta described Lucasfilm people as "skittish" when trying to get his meeting with them going. This all leads me to believe that it's not Lucas holding it back per se, but rather a combination of things including people inside Lucasfilm feeling weird about doing something to the existing movies that goes against how Lucas artistically views them, and the executives wanting to focus all their attention on getting a return on the huge investment that Disney made to purchase Lucasfilm (by making new movies).

About the Fox situation, I don't know all the specifics but I believe that Fox has the rights to ANH and so any release of that film needs to go through them. However, haven't the Blu-rays gotten a reissue already in the Disney era? This seems to imply that Fox is not necessarily holding back a release. But, looking at this financially, restorations cost money. And because Fox owns ANH, they'd get some cut of the profit without having to put forth any investment for the restoration right? I could be off-base about this, but this could be another factor at play. And if the merger goes through, it could definitely help matters.

On top of all this, Mike Verta recently did a presentation on restoring film, where he showcased some of the things he did for Legacy which astounded the audience members which included the appropriate people from Fox and Disney, technical Academy Award winners, people from ILM/Lucasfilm, etc. Hopefully that sort of gets the ball rolling for an official release.

 

21st Century Fox has accepted Disney’s higher bid.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/21st-century-fox-accepts-disneys-higher-bid

@theMaestro, Mike Verta’s Star Wars Legacy update is exciting! I read about a few days ago. I thought that project was dead in the water. I don’t know if it will lead to an official release, but we’ve been given A New Hope.

 

oh thank god. I'm happy for 3 reasons

1. Disney gets A New Hope back
2. Disney get's the Xmen and Fantastic Four Back
and most importantly
3. Comcast isn't spending money it doesn't have to buy Fox which would require to make cuts to the Theme parks. Right now Universal parks are creating way more interesting rides then the Disney parks and I don't want to see that stop

 

If George does not want the films released then I don’t think they should be even after he leaves us which I hope is no time soon.

 

Based on the fact the pre-1997 versions were released as bonus discs in 2006, it seems that Mr. Lucas is simply indifferent about releasing the theatrical versions. He simply didn't want to waste time and money on versions he deemed inferior.

 

i'm having a very hard time believing that George has any say in if the A New Hope gets released. There is no way he had enough clout to request that when he first signed the contract with Fox back in the 1970s.

 

Fox’s deal doesn’t matter though in the end. If George wishes it I want that to be respected.

 

and I would completely disagree with that because it's the wishes of the Fans that is more important then those of George Lucas

The fans and well the public in general deserve to have the original version of the movie.

 

They can't get back what they already had. The only thing they get new is the distribution rights to ANH and all that really means is that Fox got a cut of anything made off of the movie and the Fox logo was at the beginning of the film.

So now they can take the Fox Fanfare and logo off the start of the movie just like the other 5 Lucas movies.

Disney and Lucasfilm have no interest in the wishes of fans or the general public. No corporation does but they have interest in seeming to be doing so.

The sales of the OT as part of the saga set and as their own set on BD (plus DVD before that) indicates that the 99 percent isn't interested in the differences because it's still the same story regardless.

I don't think we can 100% say what Lucas' wishes are. Clearly he did put the "OOT" out himself on DVD but simply didn't want to spend any money on it which is why they were just the LD non-anamorphic. For a few hundred thousand more they probably could have been anamorphic and struck off existing IP's and restored some to look fine on DVD but the budget set-out didn't allow that and they were only bonus discs for the single releases of the movies previously in a box set.

I don't know that at this point he really cares about them coming out. He simply had his own versions which he wanted out and the earlier versions were of no mind to him.

As for Disney the fact that the extremely public fan preservations especially the most famous Harmy ones have their own YouTube and Facebook pages shows that they have no interest in going after those fans doing this illegal work. Apparently they know it's not worth it because it's really so few people and not commercial so they let it slide.

I highly doubt any version they would do would satisfy those fans anyway who want a very specific thing that I don't see being done unless there is someone at Lucasfilm who would champion a very specific project and see it through over several years of work.

Most likely they'd just take the 4K versions they have do and make some adjustments to make them broadly look like the theatrical cuts.

 

If this deal goes through, won’t Fox be a subsidiary of Disney? If that is the case, why would Disney remove the fanfare and logo? Why wouldn’t they just include it in all six films?

 

Or it indicates that the Blu-rays are the only way that Lucasfilm is selling the movies and so people don't have a choice in the matter. So whether or not they're interested in the changes, it doesn't matter because the only way to own the movies in high definition is with the changes, and so what people prefer is moot.

It's not commercial and one of the stipulations of Harmy's versions is that downloaders must first own the Blu-rays. Of course, there's no way of enforcing this but it's a "good faith" type of thing. Additionally, it would generate bad publicity to go after a fan project for which they aren't even offering a comparable product.

What's so specific about it? People would be satisfied if they went back to the original pre-SE film elements and restored those to the original theatrical cuts. The original color grading varied depending on the type of print or even within the same print type. But if they get within the ballpark most people will be happy. I'm sure some will use these hypothetical versions to do their own color grading, but that shouldn't be mistaken for said individuals being ungrateful or anything like that.

On the topic of the Fox fanfare, I'd really hope that the acquisition means that they can just keep the fanfare on the movies that had them to begin with.

 

No. It's the assets that are being sold not the FOX name. That still exists. They simply are selling off everything they don't want anymore including the TV and movie production arms. The Fox name doesn't go with it. In the case of ANH that means the opening will now match all the other Lucas movies whereas before only ANH kept the original open even when Disney would actually release the movies (which as of now is only digitally).

No because they can choose to not get them but the reality is that is a relative handful of fans.

Now if they would put out the OOT and sell tens of millions between BD, DVD and digital in short order then that would indicate that there is an actual market for that. Since the chances of any set like that coming out is a long time away after the 4K versions overseen by Lucas (probably in a new saga set for 2020) then we're not going to know.

As you say it's not commercial and the reality is that it's so few people (that probably all buy everything anyway) it's nothing to bother about despite the copyright infringements.

Well look at Harmy. 3 versions (and two of them major) and he's still not where he wants it to be. In fact all the colors he thought he got right turned out to be all wrong and someone else did an adjusted version (with his OK) to try to get it closer to the original.

Disney is only going to do it once at best.

 

Thanks for the clarification.

 

That's a bit extreme though. Let's take myself for example. I bought the Blu-rays, yet I prefer the original versions. I bought the Blu-rays because they're in HD and they're the only release of the movies on a modern format. Just because I didn't boycott the Blu-rays doesn't mean that I'm not interested in purchasing the originals. Therefore, you cannot extrapolate someone buying the Blu-rays to mean that they're not interested in the originals.

The other aspect of it is ease of availability. So often I see new users over on the OT forums asking about how they can get the Despecialized Editions. They might be easy to access for people who are familiar such methods, but I've started to realize that obtaining these fan projects is somewhat of a daunting task for lots of people. This has gotten to a point where some are taking advantage of this and are actually selling these fan projects for a profit. In some ways, it would be better if they were easier to obtain. But on the other hand, perhaps it's good that they're not too popular & easy to get so that Disney doesn't start doing something about it.

Ehhh it's not really the same thing. Harmy's versions are all trying to improve their quality without having access to the original film elements. His first versions used the upscaled GOUT (the 2006 DVDs) to splice in with the Blu-rays. Once he got access to some film scans, he made updated versions. And now that 4k77 is out, he will utilize that for his v3.0 of the original film. So a lot of his versions are simply quality upgrades, or improvements on his "de-specializing" methods.

An official release, on the other hand, wouldn't have this same issue because they would have access to the original film elements. So there would be no case of discovering new and better sources to improve upon the releases.

About the color grading, that is something that people will debate until the end of time. Yes, Harmy's latest version (v2.7) pulled back the yellow compared to v2.5. And I suspect that v3.0 will further modify things. But there was enough variation in how the theatrical colors looked that I'm sure there will be some leeway on an official release, as long as skin tones don't become magenta, like on the Blu-rays. Some fans will probably do their own custom versions with some color tweaks, but a release that at least puts in an honest effort will be appreciated by most.

 

I´m gonna throw up.

 

George Lucas's position on this is completely maniacal. It's psychopathic.