The future of Lucasfilm — Page 2

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Timstuff said:

As much as some of us would like to believe that there's that much demand for the OOT, it ain't so. It's something that fans and film enthusiasts really want, but the casual viewer doesn't really care about which version they're watching.

I don't believe that.  Even if it is true, it is only because Lucas has successful made it so, at least in the short term.  All he'd have to do is hype the "original theatrical restoration" the same way that he did the SEs, and he'd make even more of a mint. I just cannot believe that SW is the only movie in the world for which most people don't want the original version.

I agree with Puggo.  I was the resident Star Wars nerd in my circle at college & I can't tell you how many people I talked to who were (at best) very casual fans of Star Wars who bemoaned all the changes that'd been made.  I had a roommate once tell me how he watched ESB recently with some friends.  He remembered it being his favorite but hadn't watched it since he was a kid.  Even he had several complaints about the changes & added cgi that didn't fit in at all.  He even said that, while he did still enjoy the movie over all, he wished he could just buy the original version that he liked better.  He didn't own any Star Wars merchandise, but would've liked to buy the original cuts he grew up with (I showed him how he could get them if he wanted... this was before the GOUT).

Come to think of it, I knew a lot of people who didn't own any copy of Star Wars, but said they would if they could buy the originals.  Another roommate I had was a big nerd (not a star wars nerd specifically, but he did really like them) who had totally given up on Lucas & hadn't bought Star Wars since the Faces VHS set b/c he didn't want to watch anything but the originals. 

I guess all that's to say that I think there are a lot of people who don't currently own ANY verion of Star Wars, but would be prompted to buy it if they saw a big ad campaign for the fully restored originals on bluray.

Anchorhead said:

TheBoost said:

Lucas dies. World mourns. Consumer and liscensee confidence in the "SW" brand drops.

The OOT is released in a pristine restored BluRay condition. Rereleased to theaters. Sells millions, revitalizing company.

Great - right about the time I turn 65....

"I haven't watched Star Wars since... oh, before you were born" 

 

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/07/katie-lucas-talks-star-wars-the-clone-wars/

This is fairly high profile interview, Katie (with a public make over) talking to the CNN movie blog. <massive speculation on> And with the reference to Buffy, this could be a reaching out to Josh Whedon for the live action tv show? <massive speculation off>

via: tf.n

canofhumdingers said:

I guess all that's to say that I think there are a lot of people who don't currently own ANY verion of Star Wars, but would be prompted to buy it if they saw a big ad campaign for the fully restored originals on bluray.

Just imagine the commercials...

(James Earl Jones' voice) "For the first time ever... the original theatrical release of the movies that changes cinema forever, restored to brilliant Ultra-def GreenRay quality with Dolby 12.0 sound!" (cuz it'll be the future)

Dolby 12.0 though!  By that time, I'm sure DTS and Dolby will have merged into DolTSby.

Now presented in FeelAround!  :)

*Shudders*

At any rate, we might want to consider contacting Katie and seeing what she has to say?  Maybe now that she's famous and out and about, she would reply?

With each passing year it's not so much a question to me of "if" so much as "when" the OOT will be restored and remastered. What I would absolutely love to see is this:

Let's assume TPM-3D does well at the box office. I would love for the Blu-ray 3D release to be an all-inclusive ultimate edition, complete with the theatrical cut (yeah, getting my hopes up on that), and the same goes for AOTC in 2013 and ROTS in 2014. When ANH hits, LFL should at the very least make the blu-ray a two-disc set that includes the theatrical version, same goes for Empire in 2016 and Jedi in 2017. I think it just needs to be made clear to Lucasfilm that we'll pay a premium to see the OOT restored.

Any number of things is possible. Maybe they'll re-release the bd's of the six films individually at some point in the next couple years and include the remastered OOT then.

What's hard to imagine happening is an OOT release that doesn't force us to buy the newer version also. Even more unlikely would be the ultimate scenario of George licensing Criterion to do it (which would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but at the same time kinda inappropriate since these are some of the highest grossing films of all time and not the kinda stuff that's up Criterion's alley).

I recently heard that George made ninety-some-odd-million dollars last year. It seems a tad ridiculous to me that he can't spare a tiny fraction of that to restore a piece of film history he himself helped create.

That's not what I heard.

Alexrd said:

It's not one movie per year. The breaks between them will be around a couple of months.

This is news to me too.  I seem to recall the intention was to release the 3D 'conversions' one per year.  What source did you get this from Alexrd?

http://www.starwars.com/movies/saga/announce3d/index.html

Doesn't specify, just that TPM is first up in 2012.

While articles like below go with the 1/year:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68T1CV20100930

I'm pretty sure the plan is to see if TPM does well at the box office and then convert/release the others one year at a time.