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Post #1408109

Author
Fang Zei
Parent topic
There should be a proper release of the 1977 Star Wars at this point
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1408109/action/topic#1408109
Date created
4-Feb-2021, 8:40 PM

Mocata said:

Disney frequently enjoys keeping movies they own locked away, and they’re certainly not in the business of releasing old versions of anything.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is The Muppet Christmas Carol. Jeffrey Katzenberg made the executive decision to remove “The Love is Gone” from the theatrical release because he thought it would be too sad, but it was reinstated for the home video release. When it came time to release the dvd, widescreen and fullscreen versions were both included on the same disc, but only the 4:3 version had the deleted song. Apparently they’d lost the original negative for the deleted footage, so the only known source for the longer version of that scene was whatever film element they’d used for the 4:3 transfer, assuming that wasn’t simply the old fullscreen laserdisc master dumped to dvd. It’s kinda like the GOUT in reverse.

When it came time to remaster the movie for 4k and hdr for Disney+, the o-neg for the song was still nowhere to be found, so the version that went up on the service was once again the theatrical cut just as it had been on the blu-ray and the anamorphic dvd transfer. But it just so happens that the missing pieces of o-neg were finally found just a couple months ago, leading fans of the movie to speculate whether Disney will offer that version for streaming at some point in the future.

This actually brings me to something I was going to bring up earlier. We live in a post-#ReleaseTheSnyderCut world now, where something that no reasonable person thought would ever happen is now being financed to the tune of $70 million. The studios are all looking for ways to make money on the cheap with their business disrupted due to the current unpleasantness, and an OOT restoration would cost a small fraction of what AT&T is spending to finish the Snyder Cut.