In my opinion, the original Star Wars will only be released after George Lucas dies. Disney clearly wants the original versions to be released, but they will never have the guts to go against his wishes while he’s still alive. After he dies, they’ll probably still hold off the release for a few years in order to avoid seeming insensitive, but after a while they’ll release the original.
After dumping his final production Strange Magic and blowing off his ideas for the sequels, I have doubts that they are really that considerate of his wishes.
But those were done in a very low-key way, not really in public view. I doubt they’d go against Lucas’ wishes publicly, especially not to the degree of visibility that a release of the OOT would have.
Except I seriously doubt George cares anymore at this point. He released the unaltered cuts on dvd. Laserdisc ports, sure, but he did release them. He even changed his tune circa 2010 from “the unaltereds aren’t my vision for the saga” to “they’re too expensive to restore right now.” He let the Academy screen a 70mm of the ‘81 ANH just last year.
When he sold Star Wars for $4 Billion, he let it go.
George is not the problem anymore, it’s Disney.
Now, it might very well be the case that the bean-counters have decided the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. It might also be the case that they’re simply sitting on an OOT restoration intentionally biding their time. I swore up and down that people would not be nearly as enthusiastic about spending their money on “Jedi Rocks but in 4k hdr this time” after three rounds of revisions to these classics. It could turn out that Disney simply wanted to cash in on the latest format and still has the OOT in their back pocket for when the well dries up.
Time will tell.