So Mike posted an update on his forum:
Mike Verta said:
Hello, everyone!
It is September 13, 2016. As of today, I still do not have a “go” for an official presentation with the only people at Disney who matter.
I’m ready for it, but executives are funny.
There is another important push happening at the end of October to get this to happen, which is later than I want, but my hands are tied. So far I would categorize the response to our push as either 1) Completely uninterested, as though we were talking about some obscure B-movie from 1930 or 2) Nervous and skittish.
There’s a weird energy around the original Star Wars - it’s the one where fans’ enthusiasm is at 100, and everyone official’s enthusiasm is at, like, 5. It’s always been this way. It’s why when the original Death Star model was found and offered to LFL, they were like, “meh.” It’s why they bulldozed the original starfield even though there was plenty of room for it. It’s why, bizarrely, efforts to donate restoration services to the original decaying props (usually by the very people who originally created them) never seems to get any traction.
There was an amazing exception to this sort of thing in the Star Trek world, with the year-long, meticulous restoration of the original Enterprise model for the Smithsonian, carried out by exactly the sort of people who should be doing it. The results are breathtaking. We’re sitting on the same potential for the original Star Wars, it’s just very hard to get people to get behind it.
The battle is FAR from over. I remain absolutely committed to getting this done or die trying. Thanks for hanging in there, and remember to keep the faith, hard as it is.
In other news, my boy turned 6 on September 7th, and this year’s movie was Empire. Interestingly, he felt exactly about it the way I did. He’s not sure what to make of Darth Vader being Luke’s dad. I think he doesn’t quite buy it. He liked the walkers and the snowspeeders (who doesn’t?), but afterwards, wanted to rewatch the first one. Next year is Jedi.
_Mike
I guess we now have the end of October to look forward to.