Fang Zei

So why the hell is this still happening, anyway? First the amazon thing and now disney.

Interesting how this problem of ESB and RotJ being labeled “theatrical version” was at first isolated to amazon and has now (apparently) extended to Disney’s service as well.

Maybe they’re saving the fifth one for when it opens here in the States. I’ve heard they’ve done that in the past. The first GotG in particular kept a tight lid on the post-credits scene at the very end of the movie, even the critics didn’t see it at their screenings.

Then there’s the Schawarma scene at the end of Avengers, which wasn’t even shot until after the world premiere IIRC.

Someone brought up the question of just how much of a percentage Fox gets on ESB, RotJ and the PT.

Maybe it’s not worth it for Disney to wait three years if they only have to share a small percentage of the profits from those movies.

Also, if they can’t keep selling the same SKU’s after May of 2020, an OOT restoration released within the next couple years practically screams to have the words “limited edition” emblazoned across its cover.

SilverWook said:

MalàStrana said:

lovelikewinter said:

James Cameron is a douche

Ouch 😄 ! One of the most important artists of the past decades. Not only an artist, but an engineer and an explorer. The kind of man (along with Lucas by the way, as well as Zemeckis, Spielberg, Jackson and Del Toro) who is a pioneer and a researcher in cinematic ways of telling a story. One of the most talented sci-fi storytellers. So… ok man, “bouh hou hou, Cameron said bad things about Episode 7, he’s a douche, bouh hou hou me sad 😦”… Ok 😄

I don’t think anyone is disputing that. But if he could find time in his busy schedule to sign off on HD transfers of The Abyss and True Lies, so they could finally see a Blu Ray release this century, that would be nice. 😉
Seriously, there was never even an anamorphic DVD of either film.

At least by waiting this long they can take advantage of even newer home video formats … assuming they ever get around to it at all.

To clarify, yes, they announced it several movies in, unlike the MCU.

Sougouk said:

darthrush said:

lovelikewinter said:

James Cameron is a douche who only gets away with it because most of his movies turn out decent. Good luck on people caring about the 5 million Avatar sequels.

I loved Avatar…sue me.

I liked Avatar, it was a fun movie. But, making 4 sequels… sheesh!

In all fairness, Hollywood set a terrible precedent when a Transformers Cinematic Universe was announced.

Disco_Lobot said:

lovelikewinter said:

I was reading up on the Legacy 4K Scan and I’m wondering why Lucasfilm is so afraid of it. They let Despecialized and Silver Screen have free reign. Hundreds of copies sold on ebay. But Verta was told point blank if it gets out, they will go after him.

My understanding is that it has to do with how he got the source material… very different situation supposedly

Right, but … (see: question in my post above)

I mean, Verta’s is a way better end product than TN1 or Harmy. SSE can at best be called a remastering and DE is a reconstruction. Legacy is about as close to a true restoration as you can get.

What I’m curious about is how Disney first warned him about not releasing it. Was it randomly brought to their attention?

MrPib said:

yoda-sama said:
Also, I don’t know if it is necessarily disheartening that the head of Lucasfilm has announced they aren’t further ruining the OT through continued SE dicking around.

Her saying “Those will always remain his” is disheartening to me, because I take it mean that they’ll respect GL’s “vision” for SW – which would mean no theatricals, ever.

George himself released the original versions on dvd, albeit in terrible quality, which is what we’ve been waiting all this time for the new regime to rectify.

Talking about hypothetical future changes to George’s version and saying whether or not you’re going to release earlier versions that already exist seem like two totally unrelated things to me.

It’s going to be interesting to see just what film elements they end up using as their starting point when the OOT is inevitably restored in the next several years.

See: the Adam West Batman series getting released on dvd and blu-ray several years ago for why Fox perpetually owning distribution on ANH isn’t a problem.

Meant to simply say “fixed.”

I’m bad at interneting.

Anyway, I’m sure Kennedy is well aware of the demand for an unaltered release on modern formats (blu-ray, 4k, digital, etc). The podcast guy should’ve made it clear he was asking about that, although as someone suggested, maybe he actually wasn’t asking about that at all. Maybe he actually meant to ask her what he asked her, which would be weird because who really cares what Disney does with George’s version but whatever, to each their own.

Possessed said:

This has already been discussed in plenty of other threads.

Also all she was really saying was that she wouldn’t further alter the SE.

FTFY

Frank your Majesty said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

generalfrevious said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Yeah, no. Frevious has burned one too many bridges with his asinine nonsense over the years for that to ever happen.

It’s all Obi-Wan’s fault.

WYSHS

WYSHS

I give up, would someone please explain to me what this means?

Amano said:

I still cannot believe that Kennedy buries the original cut of Star Wars while celebrating the 40th anniversary of said cut.

That would be a sad anniversary (with the passing of the jubilarian), indeed.

(My first post btw, I am a very long time lurker in these forums and just found the motivation to register. Living in Austria, Europe. A big hello to everybody.)

Welcome!

This is fun.

So here’s a question:

Lets say they wait this out and do nothing until 2020, simply reissuing the same 2011 discs in the meantime. Will they have to phase those discs out of the marketplace by May of 2020? If Lucasfilm gets the rights to Empire, Jedi, and the prequels, will Fox still get their cut on sales of the existing unsold discs?

Cobra Kai said:

That was my point. We don’t know the details and revenue that they get with their distribution deal. And Disney might believe that releasing this year and taking advantage of the 40th anniversary might be better for them than waiting until 2020.

Now, do I think it’s happening this year? No, I’ve pretty much lost all confidence in Disney/Lucasfilm. I just wanted to point out that it makes a lot of sense, marketing-wise, to release them now.

It’s entirely possible, and they’re not going to have another lull between movies until after IX. Indeed the time to do it would be now. They’ve already said they’re not doing a double-dip of Rogue One like they did with TFA, which kinda leaves the latter half of the year wide open.

Like I said before, I could totally see them putting out a regular 1080p blu-ray of the OOT this year because of the guaranteed dollars it would bring in, even if they have to share some of it with Fox. They would still have a UHD in their back pocket waiting to be released after May of 2020.

Cobra Kai said:

Disco_Lobot said:

It’s not like Lucasfilm hasn’t altered ROTJ multiple times after the director passed away… Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy there?

Also - why would they do any release prior to 2020? Spending a bunch of money on an OT restoration and having to split the money from TESB and ROTJ with Fox is just stupid. I still don’t know why anyone is expecting anything to happen prior to the rights reverting

First of all, none of us know what kind of distribution deal Fox has, nor what kind of money we’re talking about here. It may not be an issue at all.

By releasing them this year, on the 40th anniversary, they have a huge, built-in marketing message and can take advantage of all of the current hoopla surrounding the anniversary.

I’m not completely ruling out a release this year until May 25th has come and gone, although if we haven’t heard anything by May 4th I’d say the chances are next to zero.

As for the deal with Fox, we may not know the fine details (I did find it curious that Disney was mentioned at all alongside Fox and LFL in the press release for the 2015 blu-ray reissue), but we do know that Fox retains distribution on ANH forever and that the rights to the other five revert fully to LFL in May of 2020.

nickyd47 said:

Windexed said:

nickyd47 said:

Also, does it matter if Kathleen believes in George’s vision when the house of mouse can override that and be like “nope, we like money, put out the OOT, we worked out a deal with FOX”

They let Disney have their way with EP7 so…

This. George was his own boss. If he wanted to make a sw film made of nothing but of cgi potatoes, he could. Kathleen Kennedy is not her own boss. She is a figurehead/manager who answers to stock holders and a corporate board (see: syndicate).

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they bought EVERYTHING. There’s no contract that says they can’t release the out. For $4 billion, they don’t owe George anything. Kk might have professional and personal respect for George, but also has superiors to appease. Superiors who micromanage every decision to the tiniest detail in order maximize short and long term profits.

Disney can and will release the out, but it will be solely when they feel it will get the biggest bang; not when the fans want it, not to comemmerate some date,etc.

The biggest bang would be literally any time now because they haven’t had a proper release in over 20 years

It’s been 22 years since the widescreen VHS tapes came out. It’s been nearly 11 years since we got those terrible DVDs. What’s to wait for?

What Disco_Lobot said, but even if we put the 2020 thing aside I still wouldn’t expect it before then anyway due to Lucasfilm wanting to keep all the attention on the new movies. We know there’s going to be a hiatus at some point not long after IX. We’re already getting two movies within six months of each other, so I could see them at the very least taking a year-and-a-half breather farther down the line. Maybe they do another standalone movie in 2020 and then put out the OOT that Fall or just wait until 2021 if that ends up being the “off” year.

Cobra Kai said:

I just read an interesting quote from a certain person over at the steve hoffman forums.

This is concerning the original restoration for the 2004 release:

I was told point blank at ILM that Lucas kind of didn’t really care that much about home video, and he was mainly concerned with whatever project he was on at the moment. They told me they had considered remastering the theatrical versions AND the revised versions simultaneously, but there just was no time available to do it because Fox demanded a pretty stringent deadline. Money was part of it, but it was more about time than money.

That certainly wasn’t the first time Fox gave George a “stringent deadline” and said it was “more about time than money.” 😉

As for not really caring about home video, that doesn’t surprise me. He was going to wait until RotS was on dvd just to put out the OT on dvd at all, which would’ve been less than a year before the hd disc formats hit the streets.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Well, now I put even less credence into his earlier reporting on the matter. Let’s see if Making Star Wars gives us an update or if the rumor pans out in the next few weeks.

For all we know, they’re planning an announcement for next month and are playing dumb about it in the meantime so as not to spoil the surprise. After some googling the other day, I found that first USA Today article telling everyone about the GOUT and, yup, it was from the day before May 4th.

The reporter could’ve phrased the question better. He brought up “the sale to Disney” as a way of asking in very coded language if there was any agreement not to release the unaltereds. Then, when Kennedy understandably failed to see what he was getting at, he asks about “further alterations” to the SE. You can’t pussyfoot around the question you want to ask and then expect a direct answer.

It also frustrates me to see people conflating the issue of the SE being George’s official version with the mostly unrelated issue of the unaltereds being suppressed.

rodneyfaile said:

I’m actually replying to a signature I’ve seen a few times:

“I have to say that I felt George’s group of six films had more innovative visual imagination, and this film was more of a retrenchment to things you had seen before and characters you had seen before, and it took a few baby steps forward with new characters.” - James Cameron about Episode VII

…

“I start to see things I recognize. It’s being very respectful of first two films. Then all of the sudden, it just swerves. And now I’m going on a journey. I feel like the franchise has been reinvigorated, like this is a renaissance.”- James Cameron regarding Terminator Genisys

He should just get busy putting True Lies and The Abyss on blu-ray and leave the movie reviews to others.

+1

FTFY BTW