The irony of all this is that complete versions of the original 1977 film presumably still exist in Lucasfilm's possession. Maybe not ones in good enough quality to intercut with the original negative, but this claim that NO elements exist is BS.
It may be dirty and damaged from years of use, but the early interpositive that was used for the Japanese Special Collection laserdisc and other 80s home video transfers (the one with the big film cement blobs at almost every shot change) must still exist. From what I can tell, it still existed, with virtually intact color, in 1995. I am positing this because the collectible 70mm film cells seem to have come from that source. I finally found one on eBay that is the last frame of a shot, and the seller put in an enlarged scan of it. There is clearly a cement blob there - can someone check it against the JSC?
And there was another one that was on eBay which was a frame that had the edge code:
Plus sign, square, triangle denotes the film stock comes from 1995. I looked up "386", and it identifies the print as being on one of the Kodak EXR x386 safety stocks (some were acetate, some were ESTAR). This confirmed my suspicion (originally due to the lack of sound striping) that the 70mm film cells for the first film (unlike the sound-striped Empire/Jedi cells, which respectively have 1979 and 1982 date codes) were cut from a new blowup created expressly to chop up into cells.
Point is, a circa-1977 IP existed in Lucasfilm or Fox's holdings, with intact color, 20 years ago. If it was stored well enough to retain its color from 1977 to 1995, I'd presume it was put back into storage and probably retained its color as well from 1995 to today...?
Again, no idea if it'd be in good enough condition for an official release (probably not?)