Smithers said:

Considering George Lucas made a point of mentioning the amount of money it would cost to restore the OT, and that being the reason for him not doing it, outside of the fact he says they no longer exist, ............ no.

:)

I don't understand this reply... are you joking around or what? Money is no object when George Lucas wants something (CGI was pretty expensive stuff in the late 90's) and they DO exist because... Harmy put together a complete theatrical release of the original films and has way less than half the material that George Lucas had to make it. And... what does this have to do with the thread anyway?

Jetrell was just being facetious.

George notoriously said back in 2011 that the unaltered versions would be too expensive to restore. We all knew that was total BS, of course. As you said, money was no object.