I don’t know if someone has mentioned this previously (my apologies if it has), but if LFL released the OT Special Edition it won’t likely be a true 4k format. The CGI effects were no doubt rendered at 2K, so even if you upscale them to 4K - the quality of the video will be equal to that of 2K (half of the prequels were shot at 2K) and you could end up with a 4K/2K hybrid. It shouldn’t be impossible to overcome this - but it certainly wouldn’t be a simple process. From a financial point of view it would make practical sense to do the Theatrical Editions of of the OT - even there, I expect it’d be still be somewhat an involved process. It really comes down to how far they’re willing to go and for what price.
New movies being made today are only just starting to have their vfx rendered in 4k. Many films that were finished in 4k still had their effects shots rendered in 2k. Like I was saying a page or two back, if the final rendered 2k frames from ‘96 / early ‘97 still exist in their pure digital form somewhere and are still readable (as they still were for TPM in 2011) then they would at least look better than scanning the filmed-out negative back in.
But even if they had to resort to scanning it back in (and as I said in my post I’m pretty sure that’s what they did for the 2004 transfer), that’s only a small percentage of the SE. The rest is still 35mm negative straight from the camera and would benefit in every way from a 4k scan.
I’m fairly sure a 4K release of the OT (or at the very least a 4K version of the first film which apparently was already completely in 2012 but we’ve yet to see what it will be used for) shouldn’t be an issue. The Prequels is another story. IIRC AOTC and ROTS were filmed and completed at 2K so yes those films would need upscaling.
A significant percentage of movies released on 4k UHD were only finished in 2k. As long as they don’t botch the upscaling, the prequels should look just fine.