SilverWook said:

I did spot Life Aquatic at Target a couple times.

How deeply was George involved with those films though? IIRC, they got about a page each in that book on Lucas that came with the Definitive Collection Laserdisc box. I think Howard The Duck had a longer entry. 😉

And we’re back again to the matter or whether George still gives a crap or not. Maybe a multi disc set ala Brazil that included the awful happy ending tv cut?

Brazil is actually a good example since Universal put out the U.S. theatrical cut on blu-ray and then Criterion put out theirs a couple years later with Gilliam’s preferred version (and, yes, the “love conquers all” version in 1080i as a bonus feature).

I actually could see something similar happening with Star Wars going forward. Disney would keep handling I-VI as they see fit, but in the meantime Criterion could put together their own release. George doesn’t really consider the ST (the one we’re getting, anyway) as part of “his” saga, right? Criterion could give us “The Tragedy of Darth Vader” and make it that “film school in a box” someone mentioned George always intended. Most importantly, they could include freshly remastered transfers of the original versions to give the proper historical context for these films. I doubt George would mind. He might even do another interview with them! It would make for a nice time capsule years from now when he’s not around to talk about these movies anymore.

Get Disney and Fox to sign off on it and voila, we would have our dream scenario.

Disney will probably want to keep whatever they end up doing with their releases of I-VI on the simple side. They’ll probably want to get it down to one disc per movie so they can eventually put out a box set that includes Rogue One, Han Solo, and the ST and still be able to sell it for a reasonable price.

Of course, I’d also want the OOT available on 4k UHD and Criterion hasn’t announced their plans for supporting the new format, but that could change in time.