I’m still confident will be getting the OOT on Blu-ray by next year. Don’t want to sound disrespectful, but with George Lucas out of the picture, it will be easier for Lucasfilm, Disney, and Fox to release the trilogy (maybe the original Saga) unaltered for DVD/Blu-ray properly.
But it certainly feels like they’re trying not to piss off George, even if there’s nothing legally preventing them from doing so. The man is now one of their biggest shareholders after all, so maybe they do have reason to stay within his good graces despite having bought his company fair and square.
I know this is the umpteenth time I’ve brought it up, but the smartest way to handle this is to basically do what Blade Runner did and put together a “final” version of the movie in 4k while also remastering the older versions. Indeed, it shouldn’t just be the OOT, but the original saga … and the '97 version of the OT thrown in as well. Hell, they could even follow the Blade Runner model to a T and branch the '04 and '11 versions onto the '97 disc if they really wanted to (although they would have to agree on a color grade and sound mix for the vast majority of the movie that they otherwise share in common. Honestly I wouldn’t miss the '04 and '11 versions at all if they were absent, and the “final” version will probably replicate most of those changes anyway). That’s the middle disc, and the first and last discs would be the final and unaltered versions, respectively.
Kathleen Kennedy could bring in George to have his final say on what he wants changed (or maybe even changed back, see: Luke’s screaming fall in Cloud City) while bringing in someone like Robert A Harris to supervise a definitive restoration of the unaltered versions. The prequels wouldn’t even need multi-disc releases, just seamless branching for each movie, and hopefully a color-grade for AOTC closer to how it actually looked. Us OOT/OPT fans finally get what we want, George gets to finish his I-VI saga (giving the SE fans reason to buy yet another release), the copyright owners make their money and we all go home winners.