I don’t think they could release anything without Lucasfilm’s permission. That would probably extend even to ANH post-2020.
My thinking is that Disney might come to their senses and realize that profits shared with Fox from an OOT blu-ray is still way more money than the profits they’d share from yet another reissue of the 2011 discs.
George Miller wanted to shoot Fury Road in native stereo until he realized how incredibly complicated and detrimental to the 2D picture quality it was going to be. I remember noticing a bunch of names listed under “3D camera development” in the end credits as I was walking out of the theater.
Alfonso Cuaron made a similar decision with Gravity. He originally planned on using stereo cameras, but then realized there were limitations a 2D camera didn’t have in capturing his vision for the movie. The vast majority of what you’re seeing in Gravity was rendered natively in 3D anyway.
Which brings me to my next point.
Even on movies like Man of Steel or Pacific Rim, where the director had no interest in 3D, the significant amount of cgi in the movie can still be rendered in native 3D and be used as an effective, eye-catching selling point for paying extra to see it that way.
Now, the other end of the equation is that all of these movies falling above a certain budget basically need to be in 3D purely for economic reasons. Even movies like Oblivion that weren’t in 3D at all need to sell the “formatted for digital Imax” angle in order to help guarantee a good ROI.
Hoping that they put the OOT on Blu Ray now and wait til 2020 to out it back out on 4K UHD disc.
It would make perfect business sense. They get to dip now on a regular blu-ray and then, several years from now when enough people have seen the benefits of the new UHD format, they dip again on 4k.
It not a gimmick. 3D has been around in one form or another since the 50’s. People once thought talking pictures, color, widescreen, and stereophonic soundtracks were gimmicks too.
The problem is that too few filmmakers seem really interested in fully utilizing it. There are barely any native stereo productions hitting theaters this year. Transformers 5 is the only one I know of, off the top of my head. Even Paul W.S. Anderson and Ridley Scott abandoned native stereo for their latest movies. Alien: Covenant isn’t even getting post-converted.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/late-carrie-fisher-final-star-wars-movie-article-1.3030154
Could be problematic considering we don’t know the extent of Leia’s involvement in VIII. If they cut out some of her performance and place it in IX we could end up seeing her for a few minutes not to mention the story problems that could arise if this isn’t done in a sufficient manner. This whole ordeal is making me nervous.
Same. I would have greatly preferred to have her full role fleshed out in 8 and then recast her for 9 and not alter the script at all. Keeping the story consistent is what is the best course of action in my books.
But what actresses could fill that role that look like Carrie? I don’t they exist lol
The best way to deal with this is of course putting out some comic or novel that has her dying in it. I think it would be better than just addressing her death with a couple lines of throw away dialogue.
I get that it’s Star Wars and the setting/story (and the character of General Leia herself) would actually lend itself to this kind of an ending, but it would be considered in poor taste.
They’re going to wrap up the story as best they can, using whatever footage they can. It really wouldn’t surprise me if they end up using digital tools of some sort for certain shots. I feel like that’s an inevitability.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/late-carrie-fisher-final-star-wars-movie-article-1.3030154
Could be problematic considering we don’t know the extent of Leia’s involvement in VIII. If they cut out some of her performance and place it in IX we could end up seeing her for a few minutes not to mention the story problems that could arise if this isn’t done in a sufficient manner. This whole ordeal is making me nervous.
Same. I would have greatly preferred to have her full role fleshed out in 8 and then recast her for 9 and not alter the script at all. Keeping the story consistent is what is the best course of action in my books.
Recasting was never, ever going to happen. From what I remember hearing, there was a surprisingly large contingent in favor of having Meryl Streep play Leia in IX. But there were probably just as many people - if not way more - who would’ve hated that idea.
If they can make this work, it’s the best possible outcome. Carrie gets to stay in the saga right up to the very end with minimal re-writing/re-editing and we don’t have to see either extreme of her being written out of the movie entirely or brought back via cgi.
UHD seems like a bit of a gimmic to me, but I can understand the appeal of 4k in general. It’s just still a tad too expensive right now for most people to upgrade to a 4K TV and 4K blu-ray player. Heck, I didn’t jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon until around 2012 when player prices started falling under $100 a piece.
It’s just such a shame streaming is slowly edging out physical releases. Video quality (and audio, in some cases) just isn’t up to par yet with physical media, at least from what I’ve seen on Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. Internet speeds can absolutely nuke any and all enjoyment from watching a film the second it starts stuttering and buffering, then crushing the resolution down to 360p until it catches back up for 1080p.
My nightmare scenario is Disney deciding to sit on it until the winds are clearly blowing in the direction of downloads/streaming and physical media is declared dead (or at least on its way out) by the industry, and only then releasing a restored OOT you’d need to download/stream and would never be able to physically own a copy of.
I feel like it won’t come to that, though. They haven’t even released the unaltereds on regular blu-ray, and we’re about to hit that magic seven-year mark since the last revision of the SE anyway. If they wanted to, they could dip on a 1080p disc release now (or next year if they want to keep to the seven-year pattern although that’s probably been coincidence more than anything else) and simply wait until 2020 to dip again on 4k. It’s the UHD release that’s going to need added incentive for people to buy, and May 2020 conveniently coincides (more or less) with the conclusion of the sequel trilogy.
If they stick to the current plan, Ep9 hits theaters in May of 2019. They could put it out by itself and (and possibly in 4k as well, with TFA, RO and Han Solo also having been released on 4k in the meantime since they’re 100% owned by Disney). Then, a year later in September of 2020 they release the I-XI box set you have to buy in order to get the unaltereds in all their 4k hdr glory.
We don’t know what Lucasfilm/Disney has planned for 2020 in terms of a new movie, but presumably there will be one. Whether that movie is a May release or they revert to December, I think the I-IX UHD set is a likely possibility, either hitting stores in September the same day as that year’s movie or simply as part of the cross-promotion if they go with December.
Part of the problem I think is the distribution rights with Fox. If I remember correctly, Fox has the rights until 2020 to the first 6, save for ANH which they get in perpetuity. I’m betting once all they can distribute is the original, Disney will cut a deal for a mega pack with all of them.
Yup, it’s just a simple matter of giving them their cut.
In the meantime, they’ve already reissued the 2011 discs twice since the Disney deal. That should be proof enough that Fox and Disney aren’t at odds with each other.
The question is whether they’ll just keep reissuing the same discs for the next three years or if Disney will see the money-making potential of releasing a remastered OOT on regular 1080p blu-ray before then. If they decide it’s worth sharing some of the profits with Fox they’ll go through with it. They’d still be able to dip yet again with a 4k HDR OOT release after May of 2020.
Life (2017)
One of the better movies I’ve seen in a while. Harkens back to the days of Alien and mashes it up beautifully with Gravity.
Yeah, even amongst brand new movies we’re not seeing everything get a 4k release. Several of the best picture nominees from this year’s oscars were regular blu-ray only.
I thought it was pretty dumb that the I-VII saga marathons in theaters the day before TFA’s release had I-VI in 2D and VII in 3D. To me that smacks of the corporation wanting to sell the 3D version as the superior experience purely because the 3D surcharge is going to make them more moola.
But they will probably get around to doing a 3D conversion of the OT if for no other reason than the fact that it’s now bookended by a conversion of the PT and that every new movie made under Disney has been and will be released in 3D. It will surprise me big time if they don’t eventually get around to it. Remember that first trailer for the '97 SE with the x-wing flying out of the tv? It’s really not so hard to imagine them doing something similar with 3D.
The problem is that enthusiasm for the format has waned a bit in the seven years since Avatar. At this point they might as well also do Dolby Vision and Imax-with-laser versions just to fully take advantage of all the projection formats modern technology can offer. If nothing else it would give the theaters more money-making options for those saga marathons the day before each new Skywalker movie comes out.
Well, repurposing footage from 7/8 was one of the prevailing theories for how they would handle this, and Disney only technically said they wouldn’t use cgi (a statement no doubt brought on by Rogue One having just been released the week before Carrie’s death).
Trevorrow said he wants to shoot IX entirely in 65mm, just as he did with parts of Jurassic World. I wonder if he’ll go through with it now that footage shot in a different format has to match with the rest of the movie.
UHD seems like a bit of a gimmic to me, but I can understand the appeal of 4k in general. It’s just still a tad too expensive right now for most people to upgrade to a 4K TV and 4K blu-ray player. Heck, I didn’t jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon until around 2012 when player prices started falling under $100 a piece.
It’s just such a shame streaming is slowly edging out physical releases. Video quality (and audio, in some cases) just isn’t up to par yet with physical media, at least from what I’ve seen on Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. Internet speeds can absolutely nuke any and all enjoyment from watching a film the second it starts stuttering and buffering, then crushing the resolution down to 360p until it catches back up for 1080p.
My nightmare scenario is Disney deciding to sit on it until the winds are clearly blowing in the direction of downloads/streaming and physical media is declared dead (or at least on its way out) by the industry, and only then releasing a restored OOT you’d need to download/stream and would never be able to physically own a copy of.
I feel like it won’t come to that, though. They haven’t even released the unaltereds on regular blu-ray, and we’re about to hit that magic seven-year mark since the last revision of the SE anyway. If they wanted to, they could dip on a 1080p disc release now (or next year if they want to keep to the seven-year pattern although that’s probably been coincidence more than anything else) and simply wait until 2020 to dip again on 4k. It’s the UHD release that’s going to need added incentive for people to buy, and May 2020 conveniently coincides (more or less) with the conclusion of the sequel trilogy.
If they stick to the current plan, Ep9 hits theaters in May of 2019. They could put it out by itself and (and possibly in 4k as well, with TFA, RO and Han Solo also having been released on 4k in the meantime since they’re 100% owned by Disney). Then, a year later in September of 2020 they release the I-XI box set you have to buy in order to get the unaltereds in all their 4k hdr glory.
We don’t know what Lucasfilm/Disney has planned for 2020 in terms of a new movie, but presumably there will be one. Whether that movie is a May release or they revert to December, I think the I-IX UHD set is a likely possibility, either hitting stores in September the same day as that year’s movie or simply as part of the cross-promotion if they go with December.
Well it’s nice to finally know the exact month within 2020 when the rights to the other five revert fully to Disney.
Heck, even the physical prop in TPM looked wonky as for some reason they decided to make his dome matte instead of glossy and reflective.
I must’ve noticed that subconsciously in the theater on opening day, but Artoo still looked like Artoo.
It’s CPY having never looked at all like the original Yoda that always stood out to me. The story I heard once about how that puppet was intended merely as a placeholder to be replaced with a cg model in post would kind of explain things. Still, would it really have been so complicated to just get the puppet looking the way it did in Empire?
Did they even finish those 3D conversions?
They finished the PT, which doesn’t surprise me considering how three-dimensional those movies already are.
The status of the OT’s conversion is anyone’s guess, but presumably they’ll get to it eventually.
We know there were tests done on ANH a decade ago. I seem to recall Zombie estimating that most of ANH had been converted, actually (I don’t remember where he was getting that info from). But that would have undoubtedly been from the lowry master. I was 100% convinced that the RMW 4k master we first heard about in 2014 was made primarily as a baseline for the 3D conversion. You need a year to really do a decent 3D conversion of a two-hour movie, and it’s been almost three years since we first heard about this 4k OT master.
You do the math.
Just to add to the fun, I’m gonna speculate that it’s more likely that we’ll get an announcement of upcoming 3D releases of the SE versions of the Original Trilogy, rather than high quality versions of the actual original versions.
Alternatively, 'ol George appears to a mixture of rapturous applause and boos, and grudgingly announces a limited re-release on the big screen of the actual original versions…before walking off smugly with the knowledge that they STILL won’t be getting releaed on a high quality disc format despite that…
In response to both of those points … TPM 3D was never released on 3D blu-ray (!)
The series will feature fan-favorite “Squirrel Girl” (Doreen Green) as a totally empowering fan girl—tough, optimistic and a natural leader.
Anyone but Daisy Ridley in the role and I’m out.
Wasn’t Anna Kendrick half-jokingly suggested for the role not too long ago?
The extensive LotR appendices, completed in 2004 with the Extended Edition of Return of the King, were also done in SD. At least they and EoD were 16:9. The Alien Quadrilogy making-ofs from right around that same time (2003/2004) were 4:3 and had to be both cropped and upscaled when they were carried over to the blu-ray in 2010.
Dangerous Days was made in 2007 but only released on a regular dvd across all of the various SKUs of Blade Runner released that year (even for the bd and hddvd). It’s 16:9 and looks like it could have been done at a higher resolution and then downscaled. I’m not sure if this was ever definitively answered, but it’s been ten years and the documentary was never released in hd.
Why crop them? Why? Don’t fuck with the aspect ratio, for God’s sake!
If you’re referring to the Quadrilogy making-ofs, they cropped it from 4:3 to 16:9 for the Anthology blu-ray because the recorded 4:3 interviews, whether film or video based, left enough extra room either above or below people’s heads to sustain that much cropping.
“Yes, but why even crop it at all?” you might ask. Well, since people buying the blu-ray are more than likely going to watch it on their 16:9 hdtv, watching the shots where they show 2.35:1 film footage with black bars on all four sides would be a little underwhelming. Especially when they’re watching the movies themselves not only “enhanced for 16:9 tv” as they say on dvd packaging, but in full 1080p hd.
What exactly does it mean for the negative to be disassembled?
The negative has been conformed to the SE since 1997. George decided to cut the changes directly into the negative because, as far as he was concerned, the SE was the official version of the movie now.
We recently got confirmation from the relevant person at Fox that the pieces of the negative replaced for the SE were indeed put into storage and not discarded.
I think I remember reading on zombie’s website that the negative need not be disassembled to reconstruct the unaltered version. Because a modern restoration would be done digitally anyway, they would simply need to take a scan of the o-neg as it is now, scan in the pieces that got replaced, and rebuild everything in the digital realm.
For further context, the negative is the first-generation source for the footage used in the final cut. They are also without any color timing as that comes later in the process, and unlike a 35mm print, which is a few generations down from the negative, there is only one layer of grain to deal with (this is not the case with SW as there is optical compositing).*
*if I’ve made any mistakes, please correct me.
Would any IPs or separation masters still be usable and around?
Nothing I’m reading here suggests ANY hope for a remastered OOT.
The separation masters are still intact, as are other film elements closer to the o-neg than the theatrical prints.
Robert A. Harris emphasized several years ago that “these assets are well-protected.” If a user on the blu-ray.com forums is to be believed, Disney has been meticulously going through every last piece of Star Wars film material and scanning them in. It’s simply a matter of time … and of timing.
When the 4k UHD release inevitably happens, the prequels will be released same day as the OT and probably packaged with it just like the “saga” was back in 2011.
You can count on it.
Being stuck in 2k hasn’t stopped all these other movies from getting released in 4k. There’s even been at least one movie that was shot in 1080p like AotC/RotS released on 4k (Resident Evil: Afterlife).
I was still hoping that they were planning on announcing an OOT re-release at Celebration, but after yesterday’s episode of the Star Wars Show, I’m not so sure anymore. It sounds like they’re teasing a surprise appearance (George Lucas?).
That being said, I talked to Jason Ward on Twitter a while ago and he still thinks that something OOT related is going on at Lucasfilm. So maybe there’s a chance.There’s always Comic-Con.
Celebration will be about remembering Carrie and hyping up Episode VIII and the Han Solo movie. It actually makes sense that they wouldn’t want to make a huge announcement about the OOT in the midst of all that.
Why, exactly? Are they afraid OOT would make everyone forget about the new movies? “Ehh, we got the original movies now, we don’t care about your sequel movies and EU movies anymore, or anything else you do.”
Well, to quote that guy from Wired magazine in September of '06 when the GOUT was released:
“They’re not going to make the fans happy because the happy fan has everything he or she needs. They will kill the goose that laid the golden egg, they will cook it, and they will sell the bones on ebay.”
He also sarcastically quipped right before saying the above quote that “someday they’ll release a version that will actually transform you into a nine-year-old again.”
I bring all this up because I can’t help but think this is exactly what Disney is doing with the new movies. They’re mining our nostalgia in order to sell tickets. A not insignificant number of fans would probably “have everything they need” if Disney would simply restore and release the original versions.
Maybe my logic is flawed here, but that’s just how I see it.
I was still hoping that they were planning on announcing an OOT re-release at Celebration, but after yesterday’s episode of the Star Wars Show, I’m not so sure anymore. It sounds like they’re teasing a surprise appearance (George Lucas?).
That being said, I talked to Jason Ward on Twitter a while ago and he still thinks that something OOT related is going on at Lucasfilm. So maybe there’s a chance.
There’s always Comic-Con.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if they announced it out of the blue some time in May just like the GOUT (maybe on May 25th?) and then waited until Comic-Con to unveil a trailer.
Celebration will be about remembering Carrie and hyping up Episode VIII and the Han Solo movie. It actually makes sense that they wouldn’t want to make a huge announcement about the OOT in the midst of all that.
Is it possible they took certain shots from the bd and others from the RMW restoration?
The Star Wars Show again hinted at something huge happening during the 40 Year Anniversary panel today…
Aye, they made a pretty big deal about it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FnHBITnTw (about 1m 10s in)
“The sand-hating Sith Lord.”
It’s nice to see even they have a sense of humor about that line.
As for whatever surprises they have in store, “if you’re there you’re going to want to BE IN THE ROOM for this” doesn’t really scream “restored OOT” to me. That really seems to point much more in the direction of what others have been saying, namely a surprise appearance from Harrison Ford or GL himself.
Honestly, it wouldn’t matter if it’s not at the opening panel, I don’t even need an announcement that it’s happening this year. I just want someone at this convention to address the issue.
I had a full-sized video poster for LOTR: The Two Towers that I got at the midnight release for the theatrical dvd way back in August of '03. Not sure if it got thrown out or if it’s still rolled up in a cardboard tube, but it had sustained several major rips the last time I saw it.