‘Disney Has Acquired Fox; What Does that Mean for Star Wars?’:-
https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2019/03/disney-acquired-fox-star-wars-meaning.html - 2019 article
a snippet…
"Let’s start by clearing up a big misconception right off the bat: no, we are not getting the original theatrical trilogy. For those of you unaware, there has been a long-running fan conspiracy that Lucasfilm are set to release remastered, unaltered versions of the first three Star Wars movies (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) before George Lucas went back to edit them any day now for the over two decades. In spite of that hope becoming more and more of a pipe dream since Lucas released the initial versions of the Star Wars Special Editions and their plethora of changes (some controversial, some deemed unnecessary, and a few actually praised), the belief that Lucasfilm are waiting for the right time to release the unaltered versions of the movies has persisted, and has gained new life with Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm and Fox alike.
The thing is, ownership of Lucasfilm and Fox are not what what’s keeping the old versions of the movies from seeing the light of day in an official capacity; George Lucas himself is. And he’s repeatedly stated that he wants those changes to stay put. When he threw fans a bone in the early 2000s with DVD versions of the original versions, it turned out to be not what fans were hoping for when it was really just the LaserDisc version of the movies ported over to DVD, without any actual remastering of the visual or audio quality put into place. That alone should indicate what his position on his old versions of the movies are – in spite of the preference of the fans, he feels that the revision of Return of the Jedi that has Darth Vader shout “No!” and a celebration of the Emperor’s death across the galaxy far, far away instead of just on Endor is the definitive version of the film. Unless he suddenly changes his mind (and, sure, he’s flip-flopped plenty of times before, but this is one subject he’s remained steadfast on for over twenty years), we’re not going to get official remastered versions of the original cuts of those films anytime soon, if ever.
Evidence has surfaced suggesting that Lucasfilm have internally decided to remaster the original, unaltered prints – from of footage that made it to the theater to footage included as deleted scenes on the DVD and Blu-Ray versions and some footage that has still not seen the light of day – but it appears to be for their use only. It appears that this played a role in how they were able to integrate unused footage of Red and Gold Leaders into the final battle sequence of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or how they were able to include a slightly different take of Princess Leia’s plea for help in The Last Jedi to suit the shot that Rian Johnson filmed with Mark Hamill and Jimmy Vee. But don’t expect the unedited clips that were actually featured in the original trilogy movies to see the light of day.
The plus side is that, if you know where to look, Lucasfilm has seemingly agreed to turn a blind eye toward fans creating their own remasters of the original movies as long as they’re not sold for profit. Technically, distributing that kind of stuff is not legal, but it appears that Lucasfilm are not going to feed you to their Rancors if you burn these versions onto the Blu-ray discs that you’ve purchased. Just to be clear, we’re not encouraging that you do kind of thing and we respect Lucas’s own wishes… But if you want to see high-quality versions of the original Star Wars trilogy as it appeared to audiences in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some visual effects mistakes from the old versions fixed without anything else being changed, then they are out there."