Star Wars theatrical versions not coming in 2015 — Page 10

SilverWook said:

I don’t Disney likes to leave money on the table.

I agree. Disney is too much of a machine to allow ambiguous situations. Now, if George were still in the captain’s chair, then perhaps he would just allow the fans to work out their own preservations. I can’t see Disney being willing to do this with their assets. It will be interesting to see what happens if the OOT is officially released and Harmy (for whatever reason) felt the need to continue his work. I doubt they would turn a blind eye to it any more.

crissrudd4554 said:
I view it the same way. I dont watch Harmys or anyone elses projects here with the intent of it being so i dont have to own the official release, past or present. Its until we are given the official release we all desire so much. Now obviously many fan projects come from the minds of the creators and thus will never have an official, but i’ll just keep this topic to preservation. And as i said id like to think that growing attraction this site gives people and as you said people turning to fan edits rather than the official release will result in an official OUT release in the future.

My speculation is that the reason Disney has allowed Harmy’s work (and I can guarantee that at least someone from Lucasfilm has asked higher ups what to do about it) is because they’re planning on releasing the OUT in the near future. I’m not saying that they would release the OUT purely because of fan preservations, but rather that they were already planning or working on it, so they turned a blind eye to fan edits. Perhaps they hope that a satisfying release will eliminate hard feelings and unite the fan base so there’s less of a divide between the TFN types and the rest of the fans, as well as simultaneously shut down the need for fan preservations, which are a legal grey-area at best. If Disney wanted to they could easily put a stop to Despecialized (or even potentially get this site taken down due to its association with fan preservations), but they haven’t, most likely because prosecuting people for downloading a movie that they don’t even have available for purchase would create some extreme ill-will. They did understandably demand Verta’s restoration never be made available to the public, perhaps because they have their own restoration, and it would compete with theirs, while Harmy’s work is an edit created with the intent of being viewed until a legitimate blu ray is released. As I said earlier, I highly doubt that Disney will be so lenient with projects such as Star Wars Despecialized or Dark Jedi’s GOUT upscales once they release the theatrical versions.

Is it worth waiting four and half years to keep Fox from getting that 6% distribution cut on two of the three films, especially since (as Catbus mentioned) the longer they wait the lower the turnout could potentially be? Fox still gets their cut of Star Wars, and maybe they’ll negotiate a more favorable cut for Disney regarding Empire and Jedi since they have no real choice as this is their last chance to make money on them.

Re: fan projects, it’s often been supposed (and I agree) that the whole reason the GOUT was even released was to shut down the burgeoning trade in bootleg Laserdisc rips. Based on a higher-generation source, it basically was simultaneously (at least arguably) better than any of the bootlegs, and as close to a zero-cost, zero-effort release Lucasfilm could muster. And it worked.

The quality of the fan projects today ensure the GOUT won’t happen again. To be at least arguably better than the current batch of fan projects would require a significant investment, and a great final product. And if that’s the case, hooray for Disney if they effectively shut down the fan projects by making a product worth buying. And with their access to archives, they could easily beat the best we’ve got, if they tried.

But my money’s on them not trying. Not in five years, not in ten. That money’s staying right there on the table, where it’s been sitting for the last twenty years waiting for someone to take it.

Would it be a significant investment if they release a blu ray along the lines of the Bladerunner versions? That would not be the 5 million dollar project that the negative restoration could be. I also don’t think that they would refuse to release the unaltered films for no reason. I feel like you, along with myself and most fans, might be scarred by George Lucas’ unreasonable decisions regarding the OT. For Disney to never release the unaltered films for no reason other than spite seems unlikely to me. They have no real reason not to release it, regardless of the quality of said release. George Lucas did have a reason to hold them back, he did not believe they were “finished” films. As absurd as that sounds, it was his reason and apparently he thought it was a good reason. That reasoning is no longer looming over Star Wars. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I just wish they would provide a statement on the matter just to give us some closure. The fact that we’ve received no comment rejecting the idea of releasing the unaltered films also makes me wonder if they’re potentially waiting to announce a release. Either way, it’s impossible to know until they give us an announcement.

moviefreakedmind said:

The fact that we’ve received no comment rejecting the idea of releasing the unaltered films also makes me wonder if they’re potentially waiting to announce a release.

That right there. Optimism. 😉

CatBus said:

moviefreakedmind said:

The fact that we’ve received no comment rejecting the idea of releasing the unaltered films also makes me wonder if they’re potentially waiting to announce a release.

That right there. Optimism. 😉

It certainly is! Perhaps they just don’t want to denounce their fans, but if they really had no intention to ever release them I would imagine that they would just be upfront and politely say that they will not do it.

crissrudd4554 said:

moviefreakedmind said:
It certainly is! Perhaps they just don’t want to denounce their fans, but if they really had no intention to ever release them I would imagine that they would just be upfront and politely say that they will not do it.

Thats what Im thinking too. I guess waiting and having the fan edits hold us over until they do reveal something is our only option at this stage.

I’m sure they’re happy to let the fans buzz about different possibilities. Patience is the toughest part of all this. The uncertainty of whether or not it will happen is pretty unbearable for me. At least with George we new we weren’t getting the OOT, but now we just have no idea what’s happening.

moviefreakedmind said:

The uncertainty of whether or not it will happen is pretty unbearable for me.

Yet another benefit of pessimism 😉

This sounds encouraging. I read this on the Steve Hoffman forum posted by the user who did work for Lucasfilm on the DVD’s of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi. He said:
“BTW, this didn’t get a lot of publicity, but about 2 months ago, Disney requested that the Library of Congress make for them a scan of the original 1977 copyrighted theatrical print of Star Wars. I casually know the guy who did the scan over at the LoC. My bet is that they’re going to use this for reference to see where all the cuts, changes, alterations, and titles were done. But even if they started today, I’d be surprised if they could get a remastered 4K version done in a year.”

Be warned, there are TFA spoilers interspersed throughout the forum comments. Proceed at your own risk! Here’s the link.

Disney didn’t put out an official statement on Song of The South until someone asked them about it at a shareholder’s meeting. Anybody here own some Mouse shares? 😉

SilverWook said:

Disney didn’t put out an official statement on Song of The South until someone asked them about it at a shareholder’s meeting. Anybody here own some Mouse shares? 😉

George does, maybe that’s how he knew when he told John Landis about it. 😉

That’s an interesting point. Lucas is a major Disney shareholder now? Does that give him any say in what happens to the OT?

SilverWook said:

That’s an interesting point. Lucas is a major Disney shareholder now? Does that give him any say in what happens to the OT?

It certainly didn’t give him any say in Episode VII’s story!.. Too soon? 😃

I’d actually be surprised if George tries to get in the way of anything regarding the OT. I think he realizes that the new owners have the right to do what they want with the franchise. That being said, if they are going back and redoing CGI for the 4K SEs, they might bring him in to oversee, as they usually do with the director when restoring old films. I highly doubt he would put his energy into debating the status of the OT anymore.

He didn’t seem to have any say in Disney dumping his animated film Strange Magic into theaters during the post holiday death zone of January, with nearly zero promotion. If not for someone mentioning it in off topic, I never would have known it was coming out. And now there isn’t even a Blu Ray release.

All of that has to sting!

SilverWook said:

He didn’t seem to have any say in Disney dumping his animated film Strange Magic into theaters during the post holiday death zone of January, with nearly zero promotion. If not for someone mentioning it in off topic, I never would have known it was coming out. And now there isn’t even a Blu Ray release.

All of that has to sting!

I had never even heard of Strange Magic until you just mentioned it. I looked it up and it was a disaster at the box office. I don’t think George has any clout at Disney, given that.

By the way, even though nothing has been officially announced, the amount of buzz surrounding the unaltered trilogy cannot just be entirely unfounded rumors. There’s the claim on the above forum that the Library of Congress has given a scan of Star Wars to Disney. I actually emailed the Library asking about the status of all three films, and they responded saying that they have indeed made a scan of Star Wars, although they did not give a specific reason as to why (I’m sure there is a level of confidentiality and I didn’t ask), but the scan does exist and can even be viewed if you make an appointment. There is also the individual on the same forum claiming that they have heard from someone who told them ahead of time about the Fox logos being removed from the digital release that the Reliance 4K scan is being used for the unaltered version. Another person I’ve come across online has said that their company is supposed to be remastering Empire of Dreams in HD, but were waiting on HD footage of the unaltered portions, but there have been delays because of unknown causes. A person on TFN claims to have some friend working in the industry saying that there is a plan to release the theatrical cuts in the near future. Of course these all must be taken with a grain of salt because they are hearsay and come from forums, but I just can’t bring myself to think that they are all either lying or uninformed. Maybe I’m grasping for straws, maybe it’s just desperation, but I feel like if every single rumor over the past two years has been a lie we would have gotten a comment from Lucasfilm along the lines of, “we have no plans now, or in the future, to restore the original versions.”

Perhaps it is just my optimism, but I really do believe that we will see the OT in its pre-Special Edition state before 2020.

As I said, Disney effectively sabotaged the film’s release. They released it under their Touchstone Pictures banner. The Disney name on it might have helped. It was the last Lucasfilm production in the pipeline before the sale, (George allegedly also needed money from the sale just to complete it) and they treated it the same way a new studio regime often treats projects that were started by the old guard. That you never heard of it before now is proof.

SilverWook said:

As I said, Disney effectively sabotaged the film’s release. They released it under their Touchstone Pictures banner. The Disney name on it might have helped. It was the last Lucasfilm production in the pipeline before the sale, (George allegedly also needed money from the sale just to complete it) and they treated it the same way a new studio regime often treats projects that were started by the old guard. That you never heard of it before now is proof.

Wow, that’s actually pretty depressing. Yet more reason to believe that his considerations are not taken into account regarding Lucasfilm.