Fang Zei

It would actually make perfect sense for Disney to open Avengers 2 and Ep7 at opposite ends of May. Last year, the big memorial day movie was Men in Black III. It'd been three weeks since The Avengers opened and it was the movie to finally knock it from the #1 spot at the weekend box office.

If Disney opens Star Wars on memorial day weekend (as damn well they should) and assuming Avengers 2 is once again the #1 movie for the three weekends preceding, they could end up enjoying six or seven weeks as king of the box office.

Oh, and on the whole "how will it be shot" debate, I think it's quite likely Abrams will shoot this thing in 2D. All four of his other movies were shot on film, in cinemascope, just as the OT was. Perhaps the "on film" part might change (they could go with Arri Alexa 4:3 cameras), although I'd think JJ would prefer actual film if it's still available next year. Disney will in all likelihood convert it to 3D to squeeze an extra hundred million out of the box office.

I don't see Hollywood's obsession with 3D blowing over anytime soon. If the vast majority of the movie-going public don't know whether or not the movie they're seeing was shot in 3D, the studios are just gonna keep on exploiting that ignorance. Even I have to admit the conversion tech has come a long way. My pre-screening of Man of Steel ended up being the 3D version (projected in real-d) and I found everything quite natural-looking. The only real drawback was the darkening caused by the polarizing filters. Also, while I didn't go see the full movie this way, the converted opening scene of JJ's own Star Trek Into Darkness (shown in front of Imax 3D screenings of The Hobbit) looked pretty natural as well.

Also, it's important to note that while converted 2D footage will never be as convincing as the actual native material, more and more of these tentpole releases are having their cgi rendered in stereo. So, there's at least something "truly" 3D that people are getting out of these converted movies.

Not destroyed, not by a long shot. The original negative is conformed to the special edition edit and may no longer be viable as the basis for a restoration unless the pieces that got altered/replaced were in fact put into storage back in '96. Even if they were, I'm pretty sure the optical shots had completely faded beyond repair by the mid-90's because of the unstable film-stock used to composite them (they were thrown out and re-composited digitally), so they would need a second-generation source anyway.

For this and other reasons, it might make more sense to simply use an interpositive or the separation masters and use that as a starting point for an OOT restoration. Even then, it would still take a little thing called "time" and some "effort," both of which would require something called "money" to be spent. That's all George really meant.

Forgot about that also. Never did get around to picking up the blu-ray.

Anyway, I was convinced George was eventually gonna get around to restoring the OOT someday. Didn't he make some comment at Celebration Europe about how it was still "too expensive" to restore the original versions? That right there pretty much sealed it for me: it was about money. All the Disney deal did was make it that much more of a sure thing, and pretty much guarantee it would happen sooner.

Yeah, except ..... no, at least I hope not. God, would that be dumb. You're probably right, though. I just think it's dumb for them to have built up all that continuity, to say all the while that it's canon, and even needing George's approval to kill off one of the major characters, only to then go and say it never happenned.

How well do you think such a move would go over with the fans? It's been the official continuation of the story for all these years. Wouldn't it be kind of a slap in the face for them to say "it never happenned, deal with it?"

Oh, and I just checked Wookieepedia. The Falcon is still intact in the EU. You're probably thinking of the cover art for Jedi Search, which depicted the ship as having crash-landed on the surface of a planet.

I thought the story was all ready to go back in November. He's the director, not the writer. I know the screenplay itself is a different matter, and it does take time to iron it out, but they've had the better part of a year now to work on it. I'm scratching my head as to why he would still need more time.

I'm wondering if the Holiday Special even still exists in any form at Lucasfilm or Fox. Wasn't the copy that's now out there in the wild made straight from a tv station's master tape of it??

Oh, wait, I forgot they used some shots from the cartoon in one of the web docs for AotC, the one focusing on Boba Fett.

Hal 9000 said:

I don't expect the new films to make anything of the existing EU, but hopefully they steer clear of openly dismissing it entirely. If the films skip 40 years and don't require knowledge of what happened in between, these still might be fun as occasional podcast replacements.

That's exactly how I've been hoping Ep7 will be handled. It would be pretty stupid at this point for them to do anything but this, especially considering the cover art they chose for Crucible.

It's not like it would be all that complicated. They just need to follow a few simple rules, such as setting it 40 years since Endor, keeping certain characters dead and maybe avoiding going to certain planets so they don't have to even bring up the Yuuzhan Vong thing.

I won't spoil anything, but if you step back and look at who's still alive there are some intriguing possibilities for where they could take the new movie.

Besides, if they come up with an original script with original characters they won't need to worry about what EU stuff to reference and what not to.

I've barely read any of the post-Jedi EU, but doesn't pretty much all of it become relevent again in the NJO???

Hal's situation is eerily similar to mine. I remember burning through the GoDV series as a kid, so fast that I even remember telling my mom and sister "it's called Queen of the Empire" several times before they went into town and stopped by the bookstore. Granted, they weren't the longest reads. Shadows of the Empire got read once it hit paperback at Crown Books. I seem to recall a paper add slipped into the packaging of the Episode I vhs as being the first time I heard about Rogue Planet. Pretty exciting to have Greg Bear - one of the big names of science fiction - writing a Star Wars novel. Reserved it at the library and finished it .... Just in time for one of my relatives to get it for me as a surprise birthday gift which I took to the store and exchanged for something else.

The library also provided The Approaching Storm two years later.

The number of unread Star Wars books I have is just embarassing. Even Splinter of the Mind's Eye is among them (the 90's paperback with the GL intro), purchased at the same used books place where I found a '76 paperback of Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Later, at a different used books store, I'd track down first edition pb's of Empire and Jedi as well. All four of those will definitely get read in the next two years.

I did finally read Heir to the Empire at some point, but never got around to finishing the trilogy (yup, books 2 and 3 are still sitting in that pile). It will always be considered "the most important" by many people simply because it was the first official Star Wars novel set after ROTJ, and it'd been eight long years. It's set five years post-Jedi, so books set in the intervening years (like Truce at Bakura, X-Wing, Courtship of Princess Leia and Tatooine Ghost) were written later.

Vector Prime was one of those books that was a "must read" because of the hype surrounding it. I read dark tide I: onslaught and then skipped ahead to Balance Point once it hit paperback, but that's when I stopped bothering. The internet made it so much easier to get the cliffs notes version of what was going on in the books.

I did end up burning through the clone wars novels after getting Labyrinth of Evil from the library and loving it. Of course, this was around the time of RotS' release, "the last Star Wars."

Crispin's Han Solo trilogy and Tatooine Ghost still sit unread down there, along with one-third priced copies of the Agents of Chaos books from B. Dalton's going out of business sale.

adywan said:

danny_boy said:

 

I actually have the Sony vw1000es 4K home cinema projector.

The Star War's blu's(both prequel and original) look absolutely phenomenal on it.

But.....

Due to the increased resolution offered by the projector....(all be it upscaled) the limitations of the analogue techniques used in making the OUT are far more pronounced.

In particular , scenes and shots which where optically composited exhibit noticibly softer looking images than 1st generation material.

4K(and to a lesser extent 2K) is ruthless in exposing these discrepencies.

By  their nature large portions of the original films featured such material.

A 4K master and a  4K Digital Cinema Package(DCP) may be too "harsh" on the OUT .

One of the reasons why Lucas opted for a 2K master.

Can't disagree with you more on this. They look terrible projected at 4k. TPM is actually worse than any of the OT, but AOTC & ROTS do look good. The problem you are seeing has nothing to do with the techniques used at the time of filming, but the way the transfer was mastered. The worse shots are the ones that weren't recomposited. Instead they just DVNR'd these shots to death. You can even see that they did this to some elements that they did recomposite. Plus, the scanning done in the 90's for these elements produced a lot softer results than a scan done today and, with the special edition, we're pretty much stuck with that. That's you problem right there as to why they look so soft. Add Lowry's so called clean up into the process and this is what you get.

Now, the person who invited me to the 4k viewing , also had something that came as a little surprise. He had a 4k scan of a 70mm reel from ESB (which is why he invited me really it turns out). It was unfaded, which came as a bit of a surprise. Now we compared this to the blu-ray and the 4k scan looked so much better, even if it was dirtier. Now this shouldn't have been the case, right? we did some side by side comparisons with some screenshots and there are effects shots that are smeared to hell on the blu-rays and have some very bad artefacts caused by this. I just wish that he had more than one reel so i could have done some more comparisons (and that he would have given me a copy of the scan). He also had a full scan of a tecnicolor ANH, which we only had time to watch bits. That looked amazing but it was noticeable which shots George deliberately downgraded.

So, redo all the compositing using todays tech and don't scrub the hell out of the elements and you will see a hell of a lot of difference.

Why did George only scan the OT in 2k? Because of the 2 PT films being shot in 1080p? Does he really want his older films looking better than he new ones with the tech that he was pushing so hard for? Probably not

But the blu-rays of the OT were such a piss poor job i can't see how anyone can say they look amazing, because they don't, especially when projected @4k.

Those films could look hell of a lot better than they do now if only someone who gives more of a crap about the quality than just getting the job done and maximize the profits.

That's why I can't help but wonder if the Lowry master will still be used for the inevitable 3D theatrical re-release. When Lucas randomly changed some shots for the blu-ray (the rock in front of artoo, the door to jabba's palace, etc), a lot of people assumed he was doing it for the eventual 3D version. Seemed a little weird (to me, anyways) for those changes to have made their way into the movies so early when the release dates for the 3D versions were still years away.

I can't really fathom a 1920x1080 master of the OT, a master which was only really ever meant to hold up to scrutiny on HD video, being used for a 3D conversion. Jim Ward called it a "digital negative," but this was back in 2004, an eternity ago in terms of tech. Wizard of Oz, Titanic and Jurassic Park all got new 4K masters before they were dimensionalized. Maybe it's a different situation with the OT-SE, since there are now many cgi shots and those may or may not still be sitting on the servers at ILM somewhere (I kinda doubt it). So, the filmed-out negative would be the only source for those shots, or they could redo them from scratch with modern cgi.

The irony is that the opticals could still look better thanks to better scanning technology, the benefit of being completely photochemical in nature. It occurred to me just now, as I was writing this, that fresh new scans of the vistavision negatives would benefit a 3D conversion immensely since you already have the individual components of those shots separated out.  

You could have a point, though. Maybe Lucas honestly doesn't want the old movies looking better than the new ones. It's a little crazy, though, that we've gotten not one, but two new scans of Raiders since 2003* and Star Wars is yet to be revisited. The SE itself still has a bunch of problems that weren't fixed in '04, like transparencies and movement errors (I say that having never watched the blu-rays, but from what adywan is saying they weren't fixed).

A truly updated version of the SE coupled with a 3D conversion could be mind-blowing for today's audiences, not that I'd ever pay money to go see it. The question, ultimately, is whether GL would be interested, since he'd surely have a say in such things.

*I wonder if this was more at the behest of Paramount and Spielberg than Lucasfilm, though. All three Indy movies got new 4K scans / 2K finishes circa 2008, and I even heard there were new 35mm prints made from these masters. Raiders got scanned yet again last year (6K scan, 4K finish, or something crazy like that) and got a short run in liemax. It's this newest 4K master that was used for the blu-ray of Raiders, while the 2008 2K masters of Temple and Crusade were used for their blu-ray transfers.

danny_boy said:

 

I actually have the Sony vw1000es 4K home cinema projector.

The Star War's blu's(both prequel and original) look absolutely phenomenal on it.

But.....

Due to the increased resolution offered by the projector....(all be it upscaled) the limitations of the analogue techniques used in making the OUT are far more pronounced.

In particular , scenes and shots which where optically composited exhibit noticibly softer looking images than 1st generation material.

4K(and to a lesser extent 2K) is ruthless in exposing these discrepencies.

By  their nature large portions of the original films featured such material.

A 4K master and a  4K Digital Cinema Package(DCP) may be too "harsh" on the OUT .

One of the reasons why Lucas opted for a 2K master.

And Lucas is not the only one.

Bob Gale said that Back To The Future(another film featuring optical compositing) was mastered from a 1st generation Interpositive for the Blu Ray release in 2010.

The original Superman films have also been scanned at 2K resolution from 1st generation interpositives.

Not because studios are trying to save a few bucks....but because 2k is good enough and scientific studies have confirmed this.

Blade Runner gets  alot of hype for having been restored in 4K  and is wrongly compared(by Zombie) to Star Wars.

But  Blade Runner's release package was downrezzed to 2K for distribution for the 25th anniversary in 2007.

It was never projected in native 4K

(i.e it was a 4K master downrezzed to a 2K DCP and then upscaled on a 1st Generation Sony 4K projector----which few cinemas had back in 2007)

It is also worth noting that the distinction between 2K digital cinema projection and Blu ray is not that great.

2K projection is 1080 vertical X 2048 horizontal

Blu ray is 1080 vertical X 1920 horizontal

A miniscule 6 % difference.

Th only real differences are not in resolution......but in compression.

The average DCP is estimated to be 250gb....blu ray maxes out at a compressed 50gb

2K projection also has slightly higher colour bit depths.

Just to make things more convoluted....an uncompressed 2K file maybe better looking than a compressed 4k file.

So resolution is not the only factor in delivering a good all round product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember you bringing up the Blade Runner thing before. Are you sure there was no true 4K projection of The Final Cut? I saw it opening night at the Ziegfeld and it looked pretty impressive up on that bigass screen. I just assumed it was true 4K. Are you sure you're not jumping to conclusions based on that recent article at AVS Forum about how After Earth was mastered at 4K but only shown at 2K due to the lack of "true" 4K capabilities in many theaters???

ETA:

That's a good point about 2K versus 1080p. Actual 2K cinema projection can look phenomenal when projected on to a 30-40' screen. The independent movie theater only three blocks from where I live just upgraded to a Christie 2K projector. Star Trek Into Darkness was the first movie they showed on it and it looked way better than a blu-ray could ever hope to look. Yes, the pixel count isn't that different, but you're talking about the DCI color space vs rec. 709, 4:4:4 color sampling instead of 4:2:0, and intraframe compression instead of interframe compression. You're essentially seeing 24 high-quality jpegs per second.

Fair enough. I just thought I'd point out how crazy it is that a movie with cgi from 1996/97 is playing as part of an 80's series.

Meanwhile, they're playing a 70mm print of Lifeforce this weekend, shot by Jedi's cinematographer Alan Hume.

Every summer, the AFI Silver here in DC has a "Totally Awesome" 80's series. The other week, they showed a '97 SE print of ROTJ (they showed all three SE's back in '05 to coincide with ROTS being in theaters):

http://afi.com/silver/films/2013/p62/greatfilmsofthe80s.aspx#starw

They make no mention in the description of this being the 1997 version, with cgi that wasn't even possible back in '83. They do at least say 1983/1997 for the year, the correct 135-minute SE running time, and list McCallum as one of the producers alongside Kazanjian.

It's worth noting that they're actually showing Raiders in September after planning it for last year's series and then having to cancel it. It says it's an actual print too, not a DCP.

http://afi.com/silver/films/2013/p62/greatfilmsofthe80s.aspx#raide

I could've sworn I posted in this thread, but I guess not.

Anyway, in answer to the original post, I would think they'd be the same version as the dvd. I mean, the AOTC vhs was released day and date with the dvd, so it wouldn't have made much sense for THX to make two different digital masters with editorial differences. I would think they'd make a digital master first, and then make the dvd and the vhs from that master.

Also, there seems to be confusion in regards to the various versions of AOTC:

When the movie was released in theaters, most movie theaters still used film projectors. As such, the movie had to be locked no later than two weeks before its release, in order to give time to make the thousands of prints necessary and distribute them to the exhibitors.

The digital version was a different story. A hundred or so theaters in the U.S. had a digital projector by the time AOTC was released. The digital version of AOTC wouldn't need the lead time necessary for the 35mm prints. The filmmakers would be able to keep working on the film a little longer and, as a result, the people who saw the digital version would see a different version of the movie.

As fate would have it, the only theater in Virginia showing AOTC digitally was actually the closest one to me (the National Amusements Multiplex Cinemas in Merrifield, which has since closed). I saw an actual print of the movie in downtown DC on opening day, but I never got around to seeing AOTC digitally in Merrifield before they switched it out for Scooby Doo. As such, I cannot say this with absolute metaphysical certitude, but I'm pretty sure the only difference between the two versions is Padme holding Anakin's hand at the end. I'm pretty sure the extra bit of dialogue right after Anakin's confession to Padme about the Tuskens wasn't added until home video (dvdactive's article erroneously claims it was in the digital version).

Like I said, I slacked on going to see the digital version before Scooby Doo took its place, so I can't be a hundred percent sure of all this. But I don't recall reading online during the summer of '02 about any other difference aside from the hand-holding.

....Well, there was someone I remember posting online about how they could've sworn there were two different edits in theaters of that first part of the arena battle (when the alien monsters are first unleashed), specifically the ordering of shots when Obi-Wan and Anakin are talking to each other, "What about Padme?" "She seems to be on top of things," etc.

I also remember reading on the official website - and I think this was in regards to the dvd version - about how there were apparently 80 or so little differences sprinkled throughout the movie.

ETA:

SKot, here's the full page for the image that was linked to:

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html?post_id=79223&action=report

The writer doesn't mention where the screencaps for the other version of AOTC are sourced from, but comparison of that obi-wan speeder shot shows that it's spanning too wide of an area for it to be from a pan and scan vhs transfer (and I'm pretty sure there was no letterbox vhs transfer of AotC, right?). This leads me to believe it's from a bootleg of the 35mm version.

EDIT:

Sorry, wrong forum. It's been so long since I've dipped into either of the other Star Wars subforums that I neglected to check them out fully before I wrote this long-ass post.

I would just like to say, though, that I hope George really did sign away everything to Disney, including the rights to any and all versions of the movies.

We'll find out sooner or later.

Hey, it's me. said:

imperialscum said:

Well Disney will sure make it as good as possible. But that "good" is defined by today's mainstream expectations (which does not reflect mine).

I could be wrong. Maybe the films will be good after all.

I understand your doubts. But JJ aside, the likes of Arndt, Kasdan, Kinberg et al are reasons for optimism. And they're all massive fans. As for JJ? he will probably get the best script and screenplay he's ever had to work with from Arndt. It's going to be interesting to see what he does with it.

Ep7 will (hopefully) be JJ making a 1977 Lucas movie in the same way Super 8 was JJ making a 1977 Spielberg movie. I haven't rewatched it since the theater, but I'll have to do so one of these days. The trailer was on a blu-ray I was watching the other day. Some of the shots really jumped out at me as "wow, those literally look like they could've been straight out of Close Encounters."

If he can do the same thing with Ep7 (simply replace "Close Encounters" with "Star Wars '77"), we'll be in good shape.

It's a foregone conclusion Paramount will put one out in 2016 for the big Five-Oh. With Ep7 likely hitting in May of 2015, Abrams could conceivably come back to direct Trek 3 in time for a November/December 2016 release.

Oh, and Chewie's dead. Mayhew got his chance to come back in ROTS.

Like I've said again and again regarding all the post-Jedi continuity: it's one thing to ignore, but it's another thing to pretend it never happened.

I could see Han and Leia playing similar roles to Sarek and Amanda in Star Trek '09. They'll be more than mere cameos, but probably still relegated to the background.

Oooo, maybe Abrams will unexpectedly kill off Leia!

CO said:

I really don't see what the big deal about their age is as long as they play their respective ages in the movies.  Now if they were setting Episode VII five years after ROTJ and they were trying to pull of Han, Luke, and Leia in their 30's, then I would understand everyone's anger.  But it sounds like Episode VII will take place 30-40 years after ROTJ, and Han, Luke, and Leia will all be in their 60/70's, so it won't look ridiculous at all on screen. 

 

Exactly.

In the novels, 45 years have now passed since the events of ANH. When Ep7 starts filming next year, 38 years will have passed since the start of principal photography on Star Wars. Hamill and Ford were both playing characters six years younger than their respective ages. So, the ages of Han and Luke are probably synced up to their actors now.

Nineteen-year-old Carrie was playing a nineteen-year-old Leia in '76. She now looks older than she is? Doesn't matter, Leia's gonna be older than she is anyway!

I kinda hope they're not the main characters anyway. Part of me wants to think Abrams - whether or not Kennedy even had this in mind when hiring him - is gonna introduce us to a whole new cast of characters just as he did in Star Trek. Yes, I know what you're thinking, "but, those characters in Star Trek already existed." Yeah, but the way JJ pulled it off made it feel like we were meeting them again for the first time.

Sure, it's a little more of a challenge to introduce characters no one's ever met before, but I would absolutely love it if halfway through the movie our protagonist is saved by a mysterious, cloaked figure who is then revealed to be Luke Skywalker. Yeah, I'm just theorizing, and all of this ultimately depends on Arndt's script, but it's fun to speculate....

Young twenty-something and late twenty-something guys says to me "an attempt to recreate the dynamic between Luke and Han," but who knows? I could totally see a Luke/Biggs dynamic playing out between the two late-teens female characters (again, this is going off of nothing but an ultra-vague casting call).

Still plenty of unknown factors, though.

Lucasfilm confirmed it's real, but maybe only some (or none) of these roles are main characters.

Davnes007 said:

What Disney could do is to tell 20th C. Fox that if they don't sell back the distribution rights of the saga, they simply won't allow any releases of any (6) Star Wars movies until after 2020. Simple.

 

And...why do some people still say Fox owns Episode IV?

Hmmm, quite true, hadn't thought of that. Good point.

Oh, and I just meant the distribution rights. By this point, we all know about Fox's gifting of Star Wars 77's rights to Lucas in exchange for distribution on the PT. It's just that Fox still owns distribution on Star Wars 77 in perpetuity. I'm guessing Lucas' lawyers couldn't work this out back in the mid-90's???

doubleofive said:

 

Fang Zei said:

With Episode VII, I would think Disney would do the same thing and just open with the Lucasfilm logo.

Heck, Disney may throw a few million at Fox to let them use the fanfare.

 

Or Disney could use it as a bartering chip to get the distribution rights to I-VI right now instead of waiting until 2021 (and until never in the case of epIV).

Seriously, if I were Disney, I'd see that as a pretty sweet deal. Maybe they could work it out this way:

In exchange for Fox getting theatrical rights to the ST, Disney would immediately get full rights to all non-theatrical distribution of the existing Star Wars movies. If I were Disney, I would even let them hold on to theatrical distribution of those movies as well, at least until they expire in 2021. Remember, Disney would only be losing the distribution fee on the ST's theatrical release, which would be no different than lfl's situation on Empire, Jedi and the PT, only this time they'd hold on to everything else (home video, etc).

Like I said before, in my ideal movie geek world, 20th Century Fox would have theatrical distribution rights on any Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title from now until the end of time, just so anyone doing a "saga" marathon would hear that fanfare at the beginning of every movie.

Either way, something needs to eventually be agreed upon if only because of the situation with epIV. I mean, when the other five movies expire I'm assuming Disney's gonna at least want those five back. What are they gonna do then, pay Fox a fee just so they can include ANH in the I-IX blu-ray? I would think they'd want it back as well.

Or I'm delirious, Disney will simply let Fox make their money off any new release of I-VI Disney wants to do for the next eight years (which, in any event, will hopefully include the restored OOT), and keep any new future Star Wars project - ST or otherwise - completely under their own umbrella from beginning to end.

I can't properly explain why this is such a big deal to me, but an Episode VII without that fanfare .... it just doesn't seem right

Also, when Abrams was hired as director didn't someone from lfl say they'd be working with bad robot on ep7? Jeez, I hope that doesn't mean we're seeing that logo pop up at the beginning as well.

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

The most mind-blowing release of an old film back into cinemas in recent years...???

Answer... 1985's 'Back To The Future' in stunning Digital 2D for it's 25th Anniversary. The remastered picture quality was so sharp, you almost needed 3D glasses just to make the image all blurry and dark, so that your view wasn't obscurred by tears of joy.

If you release SW in crystal clear Digital/70mm film 2D, on today's big-ass screens with a thundering soundtrack who needs Stereoscopy?

Digital, huh? I saw it on October 23rd (they gave me a free poster!) and it was almost certainly projected from 35mm - I think I remember the characteristic wiggle and shake.

But it was worth the money to see that movie on the big screen.

It could've still been (probably was) a digital projection. The wiggle and shake could've simply been from the film going through the camera "on the day," unless you definitively remember cigarrette burns and splices, of course.

I wasn't able to catch a screening of BTTF (did they do one here in the States?), but I remember hearing about it. A new 2K master was created for the blu-ray release and thus could be shown in theaters in an up-to-modern-standards digital form.

The 4K projection of the final cut of Blade Runner I saw on opening night at the Ziegfeld back in '07 gives pretty much anything else a run for its money, though.

SilverWook said:

I still think they could work something out. Disney has partnered with other studios before in the past. None of the current Marvel films actually has a Disney logo at the beginning do they?

No, they don't, although you'll notice the Marvel logo shows up before the Paramount logo at the head of The Avengers and Iron Man 3 instead of the other way around. Disney bought Paramount out of the last two movies in the distribution deal they'd signed with Marvel, but one condition was that the Paramount logo still be used. So, they got paid something like $150 million and still got their logo in the movie (and the trailers, of course), without technically having to do anything. Must've been nice.

In any event, no, there was no Disney logo at any point in those movies.

Also, I noticed the Thor 2 trailer only has the Marvel logo.

With Episode VII, I would think Disney would do the same thing and just open with the Lucasfilm logo.

As I said earlier in this thread, I saw the RotS blu-ray projected onto a 100"+ screen at my relatives' place and it was mind-blowing just how three-dimensional the movie already is. If they take their time and don't screw up the conversion, they've got their work cut out for them.

The only problem, as has been stated, are people's memories of the movie itself, memories kept fresh in our minds by Mr. Plinkett's reviews.

People will turn out in significant numbers and pay actual money to see the OT-SE in 3D in theaters (not me). That's how much good will those movies have earned.

The prequels will always be the prequels.

At least they've already gotten Episode I out of the way.

A 3D re-release of the OT is an inevitability at this point. Titanic and Jurassic Park have already gotten that treatment. Just the other day it was announced the 3D conversion of Wizard of Oz will screen in September. Ya think Disney and Lucasfilm wouldn't want to add Star Wars to the list and finally knock Gone with the Wind from its #1 all-time adjusted box office record?

So, the only question now is how they roll it out. I'm sure they'll figure out something.

Also, with all-day franchise marathons in theaters becoming a thing now (Avengers, Dark Knight Rises and Twilight all did it last year), I'm betting we'll see something similar happen the day before Ep7's release (again, count me the hell out).

The only other big question is how Disney and Fox will work things out.

It's my NSHO that 20th Century Fox should at the very least have perpetual theatrical distribution rights to any existing or future Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title. The thought of an Episode VII without that fanfare is kinda depressing, honestly.