Star Wars on Blu-ray?

I was talking to a friend at work the other day about Blu-ray players and their expense.  He brought up something interesting to me.  Take all this with a grain of salt since I really have no proof other than his word to back it up.

Apparently he knows someone that works at LucasFilm.  According to the employee, back in November of 2007, Sony approached LFL to completely remaster all 6 films for Blu-ray.  They suggested selling all 6 films as a set and even including a Blu-ray player in the set (so it would be a little expensive, but it would be worth it).  The way the story goes is that Sony offered Lucas 5% of worldwide profits.  Apparently Lucas turned them down, being more interested in HD-DVD at the time (publicly I know they were waiting for the format war to end at that time, but we don't know anything about what they were doing privately).  This was going to be done for a Christmas 2008 release.

Fast forward to earlier this year when Blu-ray won the war.  Sony went back to LucasFilm with the same proposal, except that it wouldn't be for Christmas, but possibly for Summer 2009.  Lucas said he wanted 7%.  Sony said no way.  This is probably due to the dwindling public perception of Star Wars and the poor sales of the DVDs up to this point.  In other words, Star Wars isn't considered a successful brand anymore.  This especially shows by the fact that it was hard for Lucas to find a home for the Clone Wars series.

Anyway, like I said, take this with a grain of salt.  It wouldn't surprise me one bit if something like this did take place.  It's an interesting story, but I really have no proof to back it up.

It's not that Star Wars isn't a successful brand, it's that Lucas has an over-inflated opinion of what it's worth.  The bad taste the PT, and to a lesser degree the SE's, left in people's mouths has devalued it, yes, but it's not dead.  The problem is Lucas wants to control the whole thing to make ALL the money from it instead of share it with someone else in the interest of building it back up to where it was pre-1997.

Well, he even said to take it for what it's worth (very little).  I told him that a deal like that wouldn't surprise me at all and that it's an interesting story, but nothing more.  Even if it's only a story, it's still worth talking about even from a "What if?" perspective.

Knowing how loose the computer security is at LFL (I know for a fact that they share passwords from time to time, especially when they're to lazy to get accounts for their contractors), it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone got into someone elses email using a "shared" password and found out the info.

That would make zero sense since 20th Century Fox was a Blu Ray supporter.  What makes you think Lucas would choose a already backwards and obsolete technology when he could support Blu which had more drm to protect his movies.

I believe That the Clone Wars movie may well be the first star wars title on Blu Ray.  We already know the first Lucasfilm title on Blu is going to be Indiana Jones IV.  But i would just a soon spend my money on The Dark Knight Blu Ray if i was a blu ray person.

Dude, I don't know if English is your first language or not, but all of your sentences run on VERY long. It's been irking me for awhile.  Please, use the period more!

I think the theatrical re-releases are kindof pushing it; apart from Star Wars (or A New Hope for the saga fans), there were no differences from that.  Although, I do like hte rest of your list!  A '97 SE would rock my socks off.

kenkraly2007 said:

Thank you bkev and I do argee with you the theatrical re-releases are kindof pushing it like you said. Star Wars (A New Hope to saga fans.) was only re-released 3 times 1978, 1979, and 1981 before the SE in 1997  Empire was re-released only twice in 1981 and 1982 before the SE in 1997. And Jedi was re-release only once in 1985. I look it all up at IMDB. So maybe for the blu-ray releases the orginal trilogy the Orginal Theatrical Cuts from 1977, 1980, and 1983. Also the Special Editions from 1997 and 2004 and then the final editions of the flims for the blu-ray release.

Star Wars was also re-released in 1982 - that's when I saw it the first time. I also have the poster which mentions the "Revenge of the Jedi" teaser trailer that was shown with the film.

Double post.

Star Wars will be my first Blu Ray purchase and then the 8 Harry Potter films, and the five lord of the rings films followed by Halo and Prince of Persia. (As well as the odd action film, superhero film, animated feature etc)

Perhaps George Lucas will eventually give customers what they want by accident? :)

I hope we can an ultimate box set (the saga with bonus disc per episode, Clone Wars (miniseries), droids cartoon, and TFU cut into a movie (just take clips from the game and put it on a DVD, it's a great watch.)