Fang Zei

To add to what crissrudd is saying, I feel like waiting another three years has other advantages for Lucasfilm aside from just the rights issue.

Some people are only just now getting around to buying the 2011 set. I honestly feel like we weren’t going to see a major reissue with actual new content until the time came to put the movies out on the next format. We’re only a year into 4k discs being a thing, and Star Wars has taken a long while to hit each new format.

To me, this is yet another sign pointing to 2020.

Density said:

DominicCobb said:
Well I suppose when you consider how incredibly massive the number of Star Wars fans there are they might be a minority, but yeah I’d say it’s still fairly sizable. Sure I doubt most are unaware of the alternatives and have no problem sucking up the SEs (though Harmy’s work has gained some decent notoriety through the web), but I’m sure a great many would be willing to fork over cash if the original versions were presented.

Oh I’m sure plenty of people would buy it. They would turn a profit. But when compared to all the other things they could focus on instead? It’s chump change. So they have to weigh the value of that change against:

• Pissing on George while he’s still alive, which I didn’t think was a problem but apparently might be after all now that they seem to have kissed and made up
• Not maximizing the profits from it due to the extra money they could make if they waited until they are the sole owners and distributors of all but ANH
• Distracting resources and marketing attention from their own new films

So if I had to predict? It will either come out around 2020 as a tie-in to the newly completed sequel trilogy, likely again treated as bonus material, or it won’t come out until George is pushing daisies.

Whatever the case, it’s pretty clear now that it’s not coming this year.

Well, I still wouldn’t completely rule out a release happening this year (The GOUT was announced in early/mid May for a September release, and the bd has been reissued every two years since 2011 which means we’re potentially due for another release of some kind this year). Hell, even after hearing that George was showing up I still didn’t rule out an announcement with him in the room! We’ve known for three whole years now that there’s been a 4k remaster of his preferred version, which to me means he literally has no reason to care anymore. John Landis’ story would seem to support this.

The only reasons I can think of are, as stated:

-apathy
-misplaced sense of loyalty to George from Kennedy and the people at Fox… even though George doesn’t care anymore
-Disney wanting to maximize their profits by waiting until 2020

That is simply how I see it. After 2020 they are out of excuses.

Okay, then I guess the only connection to TPM would be knowing his name is Palpatine. I knew that as well, but from the Essential Guide to Characters (unless the Glove of Darth Vader books had already brought that up but I can’t remember now if he’s actually referred to by name in that series).

Possessed said:

It was in the books that accompanied their releases. And so was the name Palpatine. I have the original novel that came out sometime in 77 and in the prologue it talks about
Palpatine (by name) being the emperor and Sith Lord, so if you read that you already knew who the emperor was in TPM

I’ve had in my possession for years now a used copy of what I’m fairly certain is the very first printing of the Star Wars novelization and I’ve never gotten around to actually reading it. Is Palpatine actually referred to as a Sith? I thought that word was only used in reference to Darth Vader.

towne32 said:

Swazzy said:

It’s astounding that a line about a sith Lord being sent by the emperor was never thrown back into any of the Special Editions.

That was my first thought as well. Due to the quality, it’s hard to tell if this is the actual dialogue from the movie (obviously, I don’t mean Vader), but most of the film was redubbed/ADR’ed, so I’m not sure. It’s possible that the line doesn’t exist in good enough form.

It also seems that much of the unused film had not been combed through until Gareth recently started hunting for things, so it’s possible this was under the radar for years?

Well, there was that user on the blu-ray.com forums who claimed Disney is currently in the process of scanning in every last piece of Star Wars related film material.

That may very well have been how those unused takes were brought to Edwards’ attention.

JawsTDS said:

So, are we allowed to go crazy over the upcoming TLJ panel / trailer here? Or should that stay in the spoiler thread?

This thread was started pretty much solely because of the OOT rumors. Anything TLJ-related should probably stay in that thread. I know many people don’t consider stuff shown in officially-releasd trailers to be spoilers, but some still do. It’s best to err on the side of caution.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Fang Zei said:

Alderaan said:

imperialscum said:

As I have already said, the simple thing is that OOT release is just not profitable enough for them to care. While it might bring millions, that is still a change compared to billions they are making with other stuff.

This isn’t the reason at all.

George Lucas is … still … the reason why we don’t have an official OOT. Disney could give it to us any time they want, but they have obviously told us all to **** off and keep paying for their shit movies.

I even heard the other day there are plans for a hiatus from making new movies.

I doubt it. Main “Saga” movies maybe (which I’d like, actually), but I bet they’ll keep making the EU “Story” movies if nothing else.

The slashfilm article definitely seemed to indicate a hiatus from the movies in general, not just the saga films.

Alderaan said:

imperialscum said:

As I have already said, the simple thing is that OOT release is just not profitable enough for them to care. While it might bring millions, that is still a change compared to billions they are making with other stuff.

This isn’t the reason at all.

George Lucas is … still … the reason why we don’t have an official OOT. Disney could give it to us any time they want, but they have obviously told us all to **** off and keep paying for their shit movies.

I do think it’s partially because they want to keep the attention focused solely on the new movies. Sure, they could give us what we want right now, but it would distract from the new stuff they’re selling. If it doesn’t happen in the next eight months during this long gap between the RO blu and the theatrical release of TLJ, I don’t see it happening next year either because of the Han Solo movie that’s coming out in May. Then IX comes out in May of 2019 (yes, that’s still the release date, not December, and the rumor that they’re going to start shooting this summer would seem to mean they’re serious).

Way too many signs point to 2020 for me to think otherwise. I even heard the other day there are plans for a hiatus from making new movies. What’s going to be frustrating is if there’s still another movie coming out after IX and they choose to wait longer than they need to (May of 2020) to release the OOT, simply out of not wanting to distract from whatever that new movie is.

joefavs said:

Has the ANH screening happened yet, or is that tomorrow? I’m curious as to whether they’ll finally unveil their new SE transfer. I believe they’re showing it back to back with Rogue One, and if they plan on just showing the Lowry again it’ll look extra terrible by comparison.

From what Tack reported last summer, the roadshow might have already been the grand unveiling.

ETA: Apparently they’re doing a back to back screening of Rogue One and ANH Friday night and then an ESB-RotJ-TFA triple feature on Saturday night.

Density said:

At this point I don’t even care anymore. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that we probably aren’t going to see anything until George kicks the bucket. And as annoyed with him as I am for what he did to this franchise, I don’t wish that on him. I’ll probably have kids of my own old enough to watch the series by the time the OUT comes out, and by then it will probably be some holographic 8K virtual whatever, forget about Blu-ray. That’s fine. I’m just glad this site exists so I’m not stuck with laserdisc transfers in the meantime.

I also can’t shake the feeling George has something to do with it. Even if the movies no longer legally belong to him, Disney and Fox are probably sticking to his vision out of some misplaced sense of loyalty, just because.

Anyway, I missed the first hour or so of the livestream for reasons I won’t bother going into here, tuned in just after noon and saw Harrison and George talking their different versions of how it happened. Ford’s “fly? yes. land? …” got a laugh out of me.

The stream was constantly buffering for me as well, but I did catch that amazing video they put together for Carrie and it definitely got the emotions going. Cut to: surprise, John Williams! Of course someone holding up their phone to take a pic was directly between Johnny and the camera. “Put your fucking phone down!” I yelled at, ironically, my own phone. So 2017.

Hearing Leia’s theme conducted by the master himself absolutely destroyed me. The orchestra really “brought it” as well. Do we know who they are?

An OOT announcement was never going to happen at this panel. This was always going to be about Carrie, and it’s only fitting. I don’t think, however, that there’s zero chance of it happening later on during the convention.

But then again I’ve already resigned myself to the likelihood that we won’t hear anything until 2020 at the earliest. If we get an announcement before then it will be a nice surprise. If that happens to be in the next month or so, great! But we really shouldn’t frame this convention as the “now or never” venue for an OOT announcement.

flametitan said:

Well, that was unexpected (to me)

Yub Nub’s in the intermission music.

Wasn’t that already on the latest release of the soundtrack, though?

An appropriate double post if ever there was one.

I mean, it’s interesting that they’re opening the convention with this instead of a TLJ panel, right???

An official unaltered restoration on blu-ray would be a pretty big deal, there’s no denying it. Maybe not quite as big of a deal as when the “Chewie, we’re home” trailer dropped, but for a significant percentage of fans this would be something they’ve waited more than a decade for.

There was definitely a Terminator box set at one point. There was also the sony-owned Dr. Strangelove and uni-owned Spartacus in the Kubrick sets.

The Mad Max set is another good example.

Here’s my line of thinking:

The GOUT was announced in early-mid May. If May 15th comes and goes and we still haven’t heard anything, we go with SilverWook’s idea of a more formal letter to the powers-that-be and send/post it on May 25th.

Yeah, just saw it.

Move along. Move along.

Ah, good, won’t need to stay up until 3 in the morning then.

SilverWook said:

Okay, cool kids who do the twitter thing, depending on which way the wind is blowing tomorrow, who do we tweet a response at? Disney, Lucasfilm, or both?
I’m thinking of saving the open letter thing for the actual 40th anniversary next month.

@ both of them and say something to the effect of:

“Celebrating the 40th anniversary of 1977’s Star Wars would mean something if we could actually watch it.”

lovelikewinter said:

https://twitter.com/Breznican/status/852334295091949569

Breznican says something is going down tonight at midnight.

Could it be?

1. OOT announcement
2. The Last Jedi trailer teaser
3. Something to do with Battlefront 2
4. Lucas as a surprise last second guest for Celebration

Who knows.

The very first place my brain went was number 1, if for no other reason than the fact that someone from USA Today knew about the GOUT the night before it was announced. I don’t know if that was a controlled leak on LFL’s part or a genuine one, but if this is Breznican then it definitely sounds like something they want us to know.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s OOT-related. It could literally be anything.

When he says midnight, is that east coast or west coast time?

Alderaan said:

SwissArmyTin said:

Alderaan said:

What time does the OOT nonsense speculation finally end? Is there a cut-off?

Okay, you say the speculation of an OOT announcement is “nonsense”, then ask if it will stop. What am I supposed to take out of this other than you being tired and irritated with the speculation of a release announcement in an event’s speculation thread?

I clarified in the subsequent post in case it wasn’t clear. Is there a make or break moment during this carnival that everyone who is anticipating the OOT is waiting for? At what point during the celebration do people stop and think, damnit, they aren’t releasing the OOT?

I beat you to it by mere seconds.

There is no “make or break moment.”

How quickly we forget that the GOUT was announced out-of-the-blue in early May of 2006, about as far away from a convention as you can get.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Also the Saga BD was pre-Disney.

True, but my point was that Lucasfilm continued selling it that way well after the Disney deal.

Y’know, it occurred to me that in the midst of selling it as the I-VI “saga,” Lucasfilm still showed favoritism toward the OT when they did the roadshow last summer. It wasn’t “the complete saga as George Lucas intended,” it was simply the “classic” originals, albeit in their SE form.

For the longest time, part of my speculation regarding an OOT restoration was that they would avoid favoritism by releasing collector’s editions of the prequels at the same time. The prequel movies would just happen to have “bonus” material like the theatrical TPM or the Imax cut of AotC while the originals would just happen to have the restored theatrical cuts as their “bonus.”

But after the roadshow I’m not so sure that’s how they’d go about it.

Now I’m thinking they may very well just put out a set specifically for the OT, pretty much solely to rectify this OOT situation.

I was pretty convinced at the outset that this new 4k scan was done as a basis for the 3D conversion.

Then we got distracted for a while by the fact that a 4k home video format was a thing that was happening.

After seeing those diagonal degraining shots, I may have swung back around to my original assertion that this was done as a basis for the 3D versions.