Lucasfilm Creates A 4K Ultra-HD Restoration of the Original 'Star Wars' - Gareth Edwards

Don’t know if I’m the first to spot this or not. Apologies if I’m not.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/17/01/01/1942213/lucasfilm-creates-a-4k-ultra-hd-restoration-of-the-original-star-wars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)

Mod Edit: the above information is taken from the ‘Gareth Edwards: The Last Detail’ 2016 article from 'Little White Lies…
 

Interviewer: “When you went back and watched the original films did you take copious notes?”

Gareth Edwards: “On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John Knoll, our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope – it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times. So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought – shit, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.”

‘Gareth Edwards Says a 4K Restoration of Star Wars Exists, But Which Version Is It?’ - 2016 article at Gizmodo

‘Rogue One Director Gareth Edwards Says There’s a 4K Restoration of ‘A New Hope’’ - 2016 article at IndieWire

‘Gareth Edwards Says Lucasfilm Has a 4K Restoration of the Original ‘Star Wars’, But When Will We See It?’ - 2016 article at SlashFilm

You’re definitely not the first to post that bit about what Edwards said (but I think this might be the first time I’ve seen someone post a slashdot link in about ten years! haha)

There are discussions in a few threads here already. Basically, it is nothing confirmed at this point and Edwards didn’t go into any real detail about the version he saw.

I found it pretty disturbing that he described all these reels of 35mm film laying around in the archive, including out takes and such, that had never been digitally scanned whatsoever. He used some of that footage in the film (I think I have to leave it at that for now, with the spoiler rules in place). Hopefully all of the footage is being dealt with properly now, but I doubt it.

Maybe I’m missing something but the use of “original” seems a bit misleading.
I’ve read all the linked articles including Edward’s interview, and nowhere does it specifically state it’s the OOT version of the film, just a lot of speculation and guesswork. The articles jump between referring to the film as “the original Star Wars” and “A New Hope,” so I don’t think they’re alluding to an OOT version as much as they are specifying which film it is.
Unless I’ve overlooked something I’m willing to bet it’s the 2011 version remastered in 4K.

Either way we’re not going to know anything until we receive official word.

It’s the proverbial “sad state of affairs” when a director says they saw a 4k restoration of Star Wars and the interviewer doesn’t even ask what version it was.

But hey, the SE of ANH is twenty years old this month. It’s had all that time to become normalized.