Disney owns all of what was 20th Century Fox now and everything Fox owned the rights to, so that ain’t the reason.

The consensus seems to be that the people currently in charge at Lucasfilm feel a sense of loyalty to George, and that Disney might have even made a gentlemens’ agreement with the man not to release anything other than his preferred versions.

I happen to think it simply comes down to greed on Disney’s part and the desire to maximize profits. For all we know, they might have been planning from the get-go to eventually give the unaltereds their due … after they’d reissued the 2011 blu-rays several times and then at least once on 4k UHD, of course. If that’s in fact the case (we have no way of knowing, but we can speculate) then it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the massive financial losses they’re about to incur this year, err, “accelerate” their plans just a little.