team_negative1 said:

This is what was reported for the SE versions:

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It ultimately cost $15 million to restore all three films. Fox, which owns "Star Wars," put up $10 million to refurbish the film. Lucas, who owns the subsequent films, contributed $5 million to revamp "The Empire Strikes Back," which arrives Feb. 21, and "Return of the Jedi," due out March 7. (Fox will spend in excess of $15 million to launch the re-release.)

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-01-28/entertainment/ca-22867_1_star-wars

Disney would be fortunate to be able to come up with any money near that amount to restore the originals. Although, there are a lot more variables to contend with now, than there were in the past. So taking into account inflation and other variables, it would definitely be higher than that.

Team Negative1

But we don't know how much of that money went towards the new effects. I'm not an expert on anything, but I'm assuming that a significant amount had to have gone to the SE changes seeing as how pretty much all effects were recomposited or altered in some way. Also, weren't the films in bad shape, preserved terribly, and had to be chemically restored? Those reasons also contributed to the expensive price tag. The context of that restoration is no where near the circumstances these films face today. Plus they don't even have to restore chopped up negatives (IIRC someone posted a source that pointed towards the physically altered negative not being the case) to give us a half decent release. Saying that restoring the original films would cost more than it did then is absurd seeing as how this time they aren't spending millions on CGI, and I'm guessing that greater efforts went to preserving the films than before the SE restoration. Even still, there are more sources than the negatives. You should know that seeing as how that's the entire basis for your project.

Team moviefreakedmind