The cost of scanning wouldn’t be prohibitive, and they could be digitally composited now and printed back out to film, but this is Paramount we’re talking about.
As long as they did this for The Director’s Edition. No one should recomposite the theatrical cut, that’s a slippery slope we’re already going down, thanks to someone at Paramount just doing their own thing from what it looks like.
Here are my VisComp Galleries:
The Motion Picture: Theatrical
The Search for Spock / The Voyage Home