Wazzles said:

towne32 said:

Mike O said:

but why spend the tons of money and time on a restoration of a version with a tiny existing interested group of purchasers when the existing versions, for which they already have HD masters, are selling like heroine?

If they ever want to release in 4K (and not just an upscale), they'll need to either release the 1997 version as-is, or spend money modifying them in some way. That could mean re-building something that resembles the 2011, the OOT, or both.

Well not even the 97's as-is would work. AFAIK, the CGI is rendered in like 2k. So to release the current version (or something that resembles it, they would have to re-render the added CGI from 97, 2004, and (probably) 2011, and then upscale the content shot digitally (the Emperor in ESB, Hayden in RoTJ). No matter what, releasing the SE in 4k will be some sort of a pain in the ass. It's likely that the OOT may be easier to restore at 4k since there is no CGI, save for a few wire-frame models that would look fine regardless.

They wouldn't have to redo the cgi.

It would be no different from plenty of other movies over the past decade that were 4K DI finishes with 2k vfx renders.

The only real question is whether George is still satisfied with the '97 cgi after all these years. But even if he's not, it's now Disney who controls the purse strings. I doubt they would bother.