’Why Hasn’t Disney Released The Original Unaltered Star Wars Films?’:-
Over the weekend Ant-Man director Peyton Reed took to Twitter to ask for something Star Wars fans have been pestering people about since George Lucas first re-released the original Star Wars trilogy with a bunch of changes. He wants Lucasfilm to release an unaltered version of the original film on Blu-ray.
https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/09/why-hasnt-disney-released-the-original-unaltered-star-wars-films - 2017 article
a snippet…
'George Lucas notoriously considered each iteration of the Star Wars special editions as the definitive version of the film, with new changes popping up every time the trilogy was released on a new format. He insisted that the special editions were the films he had originally wanted to make, and in 2004 he even went so far as to say he wouldn’t re-release the unaltered versions on DVD.
George Lucas - “The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. … I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore.”
He eventually relented and released the unaltered cuts on DVD for a limited time in 2006, bundled with the 2004 special editions. There are plenty of them available on sites like eBay if anyone wants them. The films didn’t arrive on Blu-ray until 2011, a single year before he sold the franchise to Disney, meaning the unaltered cuts never officially arrived in high definition.’
Also featured in the above article…
^ https://twitter.com/MrPeytonReed/status/911024440766582784