I heard this morning and somehow didn't remember to head over here until just now.
Damn, did this news hit me hard.
I've also got somewhat of a "just yesterday" story. Last night I got in a traffic jam driving up I-95, turned on the radio to find out what was up and heard Leslie Nielsen had died. I had listened to the first several minutes of the slashfilmcast episode where massawyrm from aintitcool mentions recently seeing an original 1980 print of Empire. I had nothing but time to kill, so I decided to listen to the rest. Later on in the episode they bring up the news of the 3D conversions and Massawyrm said how the original version of Empire, with all of its mistakes, was still so awesome to watch.