crissrudd4554 said:
Fang Zei said:
crissrudd4554 said:
If something does happen this year and it’s not a repackaging of the 2011 discs I think it’ll be a 4K restoration release of ANH only. Waiting til 2020 doesn’t really matter in that films case. However restored unaltered cuts of ESB, ROTJ and the PT sounds likely after 2020 since Lucasfilm/Disney will now have full ownership of them plus 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of ESB. Just theory of course.
1997 only being ANH’s 20th didn’t stop them from releasing Empire and Jedi also.
Yes, I realize the rights to ANH will never revert to Lucasfilm, but I’m pretty sure Fox can’t release something new without getting LFL’s approval first. Otherwise they would face the wrath of Disney’s lawyers.
I’ve heard it argued that Fox effectively owns ANH since they control the distribution rights forever, regardless of what we’ve heard about them “gifting” it back to George in the 90’s in exchange for distribution rights on the PT. I feel like we still don’t know the whole story behind that. Zombie’s article on the subject, written in 2008 well before the Disney deal, suggests Fox did indeed hand the copyright over to Lucasfilm in the late 90’s: http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/buyingstarwars.html
I know Fox would still need approval, I was just saying since they control the distribution rights for that film there’s no need to hold out til 2020 for Lucasfilm/Disney to get a 4K remaster of that film out on BD. The other films on the other hand I could possibly see them waiting it out til 2020 since Fox won’t be an obstacle. However as you pointed out there’s still likely elements to this whole ‘rights’ situation that hasn’t been explained so at the moment it’s all speculation.
What I forgot to say was that Disney probably wouldn’t want just one movie getting its own release without the other two as well. In fact, they would probably want all six getting reissued even if the only big deal is that IV-VI finally include the remastered original versions.
CHEWBAKAspelledwrong raises a good point. Streaming is only going to grow in the next several years as physical sales continue to decline. If Disney waited until 2020 to release anything new at all for I-VI they would risk losing people’s interest. I really can’t think of anything they could come up with to generate sales on reissues, other than the obvious.
Disney is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can either give us the goods now and let Fox have their cut, or wait it out for several years and throw away the money they could’ve been making.
I’m still very curious to see how UHD will factor into all of this. Fox has supported the new format since day one, but Disney is yet to officially announce anything. If it were up to me, Lucasfilm would do a 40th anniversary release Blade Runner style, with separate SKU’s for regular and UHD blu. That way, people like me who still haven’t upgraded their hardware would be forced to buy the regular blu-ray in the meantime and the uhd version would still be there years from now when Disney’s regained the rights.
Or maybe Disney will simply keep the UHD in their pocket until 2020, but I find that unlikely since more and more people are upgrading to 4k and would be pissed to see I-VI (well, at least IV-VI) withheld when TFA and RO will likely be released on the format in the next year or so.
But the least likely scenario to me is having the same old 2011 discs reissued again and again for the next three years. The master is 13 years old at this point, we know they’ve done a new 4k master of some kind, and a 4k home video format exists. If there is any kind of new release announced for this year I would be shocked if it didn’t have some new disc-based content.