I think maybe he was hoping on TN1 to get around to it, to benefit projects like this. And now he’s saying we should try to get this done without them if they aren’t going to.

Despite the status of the PT among fandom, the films will probably still fetch very high prices at auction. I think it would be pretty damn hard to justify spending thousands for a few seconds worth of footage needed to bring TPM and AoTC to their theatrical versions. That said, if we already knew someone with access to the prints, I would chip in for a scan.