Fang Zei

So anyway, yeah, J.J. Abrams is directing this thing, you guys!!!

1. Hamill looks like Christopher Lambert in that poster.

2. Technically it should say Gordon-Levitt.

3. I would pay good money to see a Star Wars flick with Milla Jovovich in that getup.

Until I'm actually watching the first teaser trailer, I'm taking every rumor I read/hear as just that: a rumor. I won't even bother taking it seriously unless aintitcool, chud and badassdigest are all reporting it, not a smalltime operation like cosmicbooknews who offer nothing aside from "we've got good reason to believe our source because he was right about other stuff." Even when there is a widely reported rumor, I won't read it if it's prefaced by "spoiler, spoiler, spoiler."

I'm gonna be highly suspicious of any rumors regarding ep7 from here on out. I would think GL, Iger and now especially Abrams want the script under lock and key. Either someone at Disney and/or Lucasfilm is intentionally leaking false info to throw everyone off or someone out there in internet land is simply making stuff up.

Also, I'm not gonna lie. Part of me just really doesn't want to believe rumors like this are true. At the very least, I would want them to set this 40 years after RotJ and have it be about a completely new group of characters, with old Luke in the Ben Kenobi role. In other words, it should be in the spirit of the original 1977 film. Also, this is a perfect way for them to avoid the problems of reconciling ep7 with the post-RotJ EU. Instead of "pretending it never happened" they would simply be "ignoring it."

When this thing starts shooting next year, it will have been 38 years since the original film was shot. Having it take place 45 years later doesn't seem so complicated to me.

Well, it is being directed by a guy who's made two Star Trek movies.

They're setting our expectations pretty damn high by hiring an oscar-winning writer.

I'm with Darth Ender on this: I hope the new movies do their own thing. To me that means setting this 40-45 years after RotJ (which is roughly where they're up to now in the books) and going in a completely new direction from there. I kinda hope the EU stuff that's happened in that time doesn't even get referenced. Just because they'd be "ignoring" it doesn't mean they'd be "pretending it never happened."

So, in reply to the OP, assuming LFL isn't rebooting the post-Jedi EU I have no lingering questions.

The actors never stepped outside a soundstage for ROTS, so far as I know. Even if they did shoot outside, it was still probably on a backlot.

McCallum bragged about how they went to more separate locations around the world for RotS than on any previous Star Wars movie, but these were entirely for purposes of getting live-action effects plates. For example, a crew was sent to Sicily when word got out that Mt. Etna was erupting. They got some footage (from a distance, of course) and used it to help create Mustafar. Some shots from Switzerland were used to realize Alderaan while remote locales in China and Thailand formed the basis for Kashyyyk. The Tunisia plates for the Lars Homestead were filmed while they were there for AotC. I'm not sure if they went back to Italy and/or Spain for that short scene on Naboo.

The locations crews for the various shoots are all listed in the end credits of RotS.

I hope Fox distributes 7, 8 and 9 theatrically so we can hear that fanfare at the beginning of every Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title.

Don't say it'll never happen!

Disney's not gonna want to wait forever (literally) to get full rights to Episode 4, are they?????

Speaking of people I'm betting would love to be in Ep7.....

skyjedi, is that an actual verified quote from Pegg in your sig? I only just noticed it, so I apologize if you've had it for a while. I'm guessing it's from a year and a half ago, when the blu-rays hit? I would think Pegg would love to be in Ep7, especially now that his friend JJ is directing. Granted, it might be a little jarring having an actor from ST cross over so blatantly into SW.

Well, it's not unlike what happened with Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan didn't know Batman all that well, but it didn't matter since he had David Goyer helping him come up with the story and write the screenplay.

The Goyer to Abrams' Nolan on Star Trek (and the sequel) is Roberto Orci.

All Hollywood ultimately cares about is that the director is competant and can handle a big-budget movie, especially when we're talking $150 million or more. Occasionally, the director also happens to be a huge fan of the property in question. Zack Snyder made Warner Brothers a lot of money with 300 and used it as his chance to finally get their long-in-development-hell Watchmen movie greenlit. Even then, Warner chose to co-finance the movie with Paramount, knowing it would be twice the budget of 300 and once again R-rated.

Scott Pilgrim is a good example of a low-budget adaptation with a geeky director that Hollywood was willing to make since it wasn't a huge financial risk. Compare that to something like Land of the Lost, from the previous summer (and also from Universal), also with a geeky director but with a bigger budget because of the box office potential Will Ferrell's name carries.

This is why I think Joss Whedon never would've gotten the job for Avengers if it'd been a Hollywood studio calling the shots and not Marvel. Handing a $220 million summer tentpole to a guy whose only movie cost nowhere near as much and couldn't even make that back at the box office??? Well, I think the studios will be a little more willing to take a chance like that after seeing how it worked out for Disney.

The road towards my becoming a purist probably started the night of ROTS' midnight release. I'd heard there were laserdisc-to-dvd preservations fans had made, but during that long wait in the theater for the clock to strike 12 I noticed someone in the rows ahead watching the original version of empire on their laptop. I knew it was the original when it wiped to that shot of cloud city and a cloud car flew past the camera with no cgi gas refinery to be seen. It'd been so long since I'd seen the original version of the trilogy that I'd completely forgotten how that shot originally looked!

That Fall I got a nice fast computer. I guess it was just pure curiosity that eventually led me to seek out these "fan preservations" of the OOT. I must've looked it up on google or something. It led me to these forums, which I must've already heard about anyway by that point. I contacted Rikter Blacksvn, did some research, and got the cowclops v2 transfers off of myspleen. I specifically chose that transfer because it was anamorphic. Even though it made no difference since it was a letterbox 4:3 source, I still wanted the disc itself like that just to "future proof" it.

It was really cool to finally watch the original versions in their OAR, and in higher resolution than vhs. The closest I'd ever come to that was back in the early-to-mid 90's when I think I caught some of Empire letterboxed on scifi channel.

Also, the pcm soundtrack was nice!

As timing would have it, this was circa March of '06. It probably took a couple weeks for me to torrent all three movies over my school's network. Then one night in early May I visited thedigitalbits.com and saw that, completely out of the blue, Lucasfilm had set the OOT for dvd release in September. Yeah, did a double-take arright. The announcement noted dolby 2.0 audio and Jim Ward's statement said "this will be state of the art, 1993." Ah, whatever that meant, surely they were doing an anamorphic transfer from an IP or something, right?

Right??!?

Then a week later we all found out they meant 1993 in just about every sense of the word, short of the physical media being a dvd. What a letdown.

Couldn't believe how many people on the tfn forums jumped to defend Lucasfilm's actions. "They give you what you wanted and this is how you respond? You people will never be happy, etc." To think, just days earlier I'd been telling everyone on those forums that surely we were getting a new dvd transfer from the IP, the same IP used for the '93 laserdisc transfers. So, when LFL elaborated and I saw the total lack of outrage among fans, I jumped ship from tfn after four years.

Only the most succesful movie in history could get away with a new dvd release of a laserdisc transfer in an age of hddvd and blu-ray.

I finally registered here in October of '06 after lurking for several months. I noticed that a couple familiar names from the tfn boards, CO and zombie, were posting here too. What some saw as a community of "haters" I actually found to be a place where the actual history of the Star Wars films, their making and even their storytelling influences were respected. Above all, it was a place where they were looked at as films, not simply as Star Wars films.

This is probably when I became a purist. Watching those original effects shots from the death star attack in the '77 film, it became clear to me that the movies should've remained unchanged. 1997 was an opportunity for people to view a piece of film history as it was meant to be seen. Instead, it became an excuse for the addition of cgi. In time, my opinion extended to the prequels as well. It would have been better for the original '77 film to remain the last movie ever officially directed by George Lucas. Power corrupts, and absolute power, well, you know the rest. How often are a trilogy of big-budget films written, directed and executive produced all by one man????

The OOT really is culturally important and should absolutely be preserved, but I wish every movie's original version was available to legally purchase and publicly view. At least the SE is blatantly a different version that all but the most ignorant know is a revision. Meanwhile, other movies are getting wires and reflections erased and getting passed off as the original version.

The only scanning that was done back in '97 was for inserting cgi into existing shots (for example, the rontos and dewbacks in the background when Ben, Luke and the droids pull up to the Cantina). ILM also recomposited the miniature effects shots digitally. Aside from that, it was a totally photochemical restoration.

In 2003/2004, the negative was scanned, according to that same press conference I downloaded from TFN, "by some post houses here in L.A." (exact quote from the Lowry guys). I'm curious how the '04 changes such as the newer Jabba model were handled. Did they go back to the same film element they used as a starting point for the Jabba scene in '96 and simply rescan it and start all over? Also, I'm not 100% sure but I think the new '97 shots (expanded Mos Eisley, enhanced Death Star attack, recompe, etc) were simply scanned back off of the negative. Unless ILM still had the final renders on some kind of readable storage after almost seven years, I'm pretty sure they were just scanned back off the filmed-out negative (these pieces of the o-neg would still be in pretty good shape since they were only six or seven years old).

Anyway, the scans were color-corrected and (correct me if I'm wrong) the additional changes like the '04 Jabba and Ian's hologram in Empire were added. All of this (the color-correction and additional changes) was done by Lucasfilm before being sent off to Lowry for restoration.

Anyone else still slightly hung up on the fact that Episode VII won't (as of now) open with the 20th Century Fox fanfare?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Disney should just give Fox theatrical distribution rights to the ST in exchange for getting home video rights to the existing movies (including EpIV) right away instead of waiting until 2021 (and until forever in the case of EpIV). The majority of the theatrical gross would still be Lucasfilm's (and therefore Disney's) anyway, not Fox's. Fox would merely get a small percentage of the gross in exchange for distributing, just as they did on Empire, Jedi and the prequels. The big difference this time is that Disney could just hold on to the rights for everything else (dvd/blu-ray, download, streaming, tv broadcast).

I would be cool with the planned spinoffs not having the fanfare (maybe just opening with the Lucasfilm logo and that's it), but if you're gonna have "Episode VII" in the title of your movie, you'd better open it right.

The 35mm frame, if shot in cinemascope, is 1.175:1. The squeeze of the anamorphic lens is exactly 2x, so you get a 2.35:1 image.

As for the quotes, I can understand the confusion but what they mean is that it's the o-neg conformed to the special edition. When they were preparing the SE in '95/'96, they actually cut all of the changes directly into the o-neg, presumably (we would all hope) placing the original pieces into storage.

The Jim Ward quote was from an audio recording of a press conference I downloaded from TFN way the hell back in September of '04. I listened to it so many times (there's some great bits from Hamill and Kershner) that I've got a phonographic memory of what was said. Ward's exact words were:

"For this one (the dvd), we went back to the original negative. When we did the previous video transfers they were off IP, one generation away from the negative. Detail has never been seen like this before."

There are multiple sources that back this up. It would be great if you were right, but think about it:

GL considers the SE his definitive vision for the movie. Why would he use a second or third generation source as a basis for all copies (prints, telecines, etc)??

1828 x 1556 is the resolution at which the '04 scan was likely done. That's 2K for cinemascope, the format in which the OT (and, for what it's worth, TPM) was shot. Multiply 1828 by the 2x anamorphic squeeze of the lens and you've got 3656 x 1556, a 2.35:1 ratio. Or, if you'd like, simply cut the horizontal resolution in half and you've got 1828 x 778, also 2.35:1. Since the raw scan itself is only 1828 - less than even full 1920 HD res, nevermind 2048 - I guess some kind of magic is worked. Beats me.

Anyway, I had a couple paragraphs typed up about how the o-neg is probably still in its '97 conformation (despite how I'd love for danny_boy to be right), but this stupid ipad had to go and refresh the page after I opened up another tab to look up the exact numbers I just posted. Ugh, I gotta get a new laptop at some point. Anyway, to quickly summarize, Jim Ward said in '04 that they went back to the original negative for the dvd (the lowry master that was also used for the blu-ray). He said that the previous transfers were from IP and even specified that this meant "one generation off the negative." So, if the o-neg was still in its original 1977 conformation, it wouldn't have made much sense for them to scan it in and then meticulously "respecialize it." They might as well have just scanned the '97 IP if that had been the situation.

Harmy said:

I am however a purist in that I think that any official release of an unaltered version should be really absolutely unaltered beyond some basic cleanup. I actually hate the idea of a version that wouldn't have all the most obvious changes but have the "invisible" fixes such as recompositing or removing wires etc. An official release like that to me would be more offensive than an obvious Special Edition, unless again it would have the original original alongside it.

This goes for other films as well; it bothers me that in the BD of Aliens they removed the hole in the ground where Bishop's real body is hiding or that they removed the cobra reflection from the Raiders Blu Ray. It doesn't bother me to a point where it would taint my enjoyment of the movie because they are small changes but it does bother me.

Couldn't agree with you more. It really bothered me when word got out that there'd been changes made to Aliens and I saw that screenshot comparison. Pretty disappointing considering James Cameron's comments about finding the changes made to Star Wars "disturbing" and even saying that the version of his own movie Avatar that won all the oscars should be considered the definitive version, not the extended cuts.

To then turn around and pull a modern digital fix while still calling these the versions from 1986/1991 felt disingenuous. Plus, as people have mentioned in forums such as the one you linked to, that wasn't the only fix they made. They blatantly re-ordered the shots in that one scene (no, it didn't make sense, but that's how it was originally) and I remember reading something about a matte shot that's been digitally fixed, but I haven't seen a screenshot comparison.

What I thought was kinda dumb about the bishop fix was that it's not like we don't already know that bishop is an imaginary character played by Lance Henricksen. He obviously didn't actually get torn in two (now that would've been dedication!). So, when you start fixing visible stuff like that, stuff that's flashing by in an instant anyway, you're going down a slippery slope in my opinion.

Evil Dead, interestingly enough, hit blu-ray right around the same time, and also had similar digital fixes, also at its director's behest. This kinda angered me even more than the fixes made to Aliens. To digitally fix Evil Dead is to take away part of the charm of that movie, imo.

But, like you said, it's not until we're seeing a version that's vastly different editorially (like an extended or director's cut) or blatantly different content-wise (like the SE's of Star Wars) that we actually consider it a different version of the movie. Modern day audiences who don't know a movie like its die-hard fans will never realize they're watching an altered version. Hell, it bothers me that Disney got rid of the original cgi Disney logo and fanfare for the Toy Story blu-ray. Once again, it's kinda ruining the "charm" of it all, not for the entire movie, mind you, but it now feels like the movie is starting several seconds too late.

I wish filmmakers like Cameron and Raimi (and corporations like Disney) would just leave well enough alone, but what are you gonna do.

I'll share my story about when/why I became an OT purist later, just had to get my thoughts out there on this.

After this Disney deal, I'd be kinda surprised if LFL used the (now ancient) Lowry master as a basis for the 3D conversion of the OT. They need a high-quality 4K source to start from. For TPM, they used the original filmout tapes (since TPM was made just before the DI era), which were used to make the theatrical prints back in '99. AOTC and ROTS still presumably have their highest quality digital cinema masters intact, so those 3D conversions will at least be up to par so far as the source is concerned (the quality of the conversion will be another matter).

The OT should still be considered a film-based project, and thus in need of a 4K rebuild. The only potential problem is that sizable chunks of the movies have now gone through the computer (for the digital recompositing) or been rendered from scratch, in both cases at a limited resolution (presumably 2K if we're talking 1996).

Ideally, Disney would write a check for the kind of treatment Blade Runner got for its Final Cut. That would mean redoing the digital recompositing at 6K this time around. Also, I'm wondering if ILM still at least has the final renders for the cgi shots (I'm wondering the same thing about Jurassic Park). For the Lowry transfer in '04, I'm pretty sure they just scanned in the '97 shots off the negative (there's still some noticeable film-based anomalies even in those completely cgi shots), but it would be nice if they could just use the direct digital source for the 3D conversion, instead of having to pull it off the negative. I wonder if it would even be possible to re-render those shots at 4K .....

Then there's the matter of preserving the OOT and, ideally, the '97 SE as well. If the missing pieces were in fact put into storage, it's a simple matter of scanning everything in. The o-neg is currently in its '97 conformation, so they've got the SE version all ready to go right there, given the proper color-timing, of course. It would be great if they could just use the o-neg as a basis for all three projects:

-'97 SE (scan, color time and you're done)

-OOT (scan the missing pieces, color time, you're done)

-3D version / "Final Cut" treatment (redo the recomps and cgi at a higher res, convert movies to 3D, you're done)

If they follow the Final Cut model exactly, they'll simply use existing interpositives for the older versions. That would still be a huge step up from anything that's been officially released thus far, but:

1) the '85 interpositives are grainy as hell, and

2) In world where we have meticulously de-specialized fan edits using the lowry (negative scan) transfer as a basis, yeah, it would be a tad ridiculous not to use the negative for an official release of the OOT as well.

What do you guys predict will happen????

Baronlando said:

Since episode 7 is coming in 2015 I'd figure the 3D was being accelerated to be done before that

Yup.

It would make little sense for them to release the 3D conversions of Episodes IV, V and VI after Episode VII had already hit theaters. We'll see them in early 2015 at the latest, it's a safe bet. I just hope it doesn't mean a rushed, slapdash conversion. They're getting much better at it now, if the 3d trailers for Jurassic Park, Man of Steel and Star Trek were any indication.

It's a weird thing to get hung-up on, I'll admit, but one thing I really don't like about Lucas having directed the prequels forming the six-film saga is that you've now got the first four movies irising out to "directed by George Lucas" and the last two movies irising out to other guys' names. Episode IV should've remained the only Lucas-directed Star Wars movie.

I reiterate what I've said in other threads on this topic:

For each of the three movies, give me a three-blu-ray set that includes all theatrically-released versions of the films. This would mean the original (1977/81, 1980 and 1983), special edition (1997) and 3D (2014/15) versions. This would be the Blade Runner treatment for the OT as far as I'm concerned. Use seamless branching for the '81 ANH crawl and we're good.

There's debate to be had on what sources would be used for the original vfx shots. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those sections of the o-neg had completely faded and had to be re-composited digitally for the SE. I'm sure there are non-fade sources out there for those shots (seps perhaps), so there are probably ways of including these shots in a hypothetical OOT restoration without re-compositing them (which shouldn't be done if we're gonna call this the original version).

I'd also like 100% original versions of the prequels, with TPM rebuilt from the filmout tapes they used for the blu-ray and 3D conversion, and an AOTC without that ugly teal cast and seamlessly branched to include the 35mm, digital and IMAX cuts of the film.

The original trilogy (or, at the very least, Star Wars and Empire) works so well because the first film, written and directed by Lucas, had the challenge of a limited budget and a controlling hollywood studio. Empire was controlled by Lucas, but he kept himself resigned to simply writing the story and executive producing. Finally there's Jedi, where Lucas controlled things a little more, but you've still got Marquand and Kasdan.

In all three cases, Lucas' influence is offset by other factors. Those other factors were pretty much absent in the prequels.

At the very least, we should've had a Jedi scenario where maybe Lucas co-wrote the script and even directed a few scenes himself, but we still had another director to give input Lucas wouldn't have considered on his own. Ideally, we should've gotten an Empire scenario.

AntcuFaalb said:

SilverWook said:

zombie84 said:

You must live in the United States pf Blockbuster Video.

But seriously, the last time Blockbuster mattered was 2004. The company has been effectively dismantled since 2008 or so.

It seems so. I'm sure location and demographics have something to do with it. (The major indie video rental place in the area is also a record shop.)

I've heard some video stores are still rocking with VHS in predominately senior communities. I imagine the new release section is a tad thin?

I have an excellent (thriving!) Blockbuster near me. I live in Columbia, MD.

Man, I used to think that the BLOCKBUSTER EMPIRE would be around forever...

timdiggerm said:

AntcuFaalb said:

I have an excellent (thriving!) Blockbuster near me. I live in Columbia, MD.

True, but there used to be like 3 or 4 in the Columbia area.

Source: Former employee of one that doesn't exist anymore.

DC area represent!

Growing up just outside the western edge of the Fall Church city limits, I actually never lived within a short enough driving distance of a blockbuster. Closest one was miles away. It didn't matter, of course, since there were other places that were much closer. I remember an erol's about a mile away when I was like five, which later became a box office video and I think is now a hallmark store or something. A year or two later, I remember a West Coast Video opening up about a mile away in the opposite direction. This later became a Forbes (circa '96) and then a Potomac Video (circa 2000), which then had to move to a smaller space in an adjacent plaza (circa 2007) before Netflix and the economy finally killed it (circa 2010). Ah, good memories of that place. Fanboys was the last dvd I remember renting there (May 19th, 2009) before it eventually disappeared.

There was also a Hollywood Video a couple miles' drive into Falls Church, not sure if it's still there now, kinda doubt it.

My parents have been in the process of selling that house I grew up in, so these days I've been bouncing between my grandfather's place in Vienna (ironically, much much closer to that blockbuster, if it's even still there (I haven't checked in a while)) and my Mom's place in DC. I actually ended up getting a blockbuster card several years ago after my friend moved to Annandale and the blockbuster was the nearest video place.

When I finally went back to finish college a couple years ago, a blockbuster had become the closest place to rent movies. There had been a Video Americain in town, but when I came back it had closed its doors. Found out a lot of their collection ended up in the hands of the school library, which itself already had a good 10,000 dvd's (even a few laserdiscs and bd's) and thus made paying to watch movies kinda pointless. I remember we ventured out to bb once to try to find the original dawn of the dead, which the library didn't have for some reason, but neither did they.

I got a blu-ray player about four years ago after hearing about a sweet online promotion where you could get a (good) player and four bd's all for $200, pretty damn good deal at the time. I've actually sold off most of my dvd's, of which I had more than a hundred.

Sometimes this was to my chagrine. For example:

I sold off my Star Trek movie dvd's in anticipation of their release on blu-ray, was let down when the screenshots went up online and - with the exception of Wrath of Khan, which got a full restoration - they looked either DNR'd or contrast-boosted or a horrid combination of the two. Undiscovered Country's blu-ray is sourced from a 1080i master, probably because they wanted all the movies to be in their theatrical cuts and didn't have any other readily (non-expensive) available source than some ancient hdtv master. That boxset was like the blu-ray equivalent of what LFL pulled on dvd with the GOUT.

That having been said, it's worth noting that even though - as has been said in the last couple pages of this thread - the studios are not seeing the revenue they expected from these expensive restorations (like godfather and wizard of oz) ..... THEY'RE DOING THEM ANYWAY. Now that Disney owns Lucasfilm, there is no excuse beyond not wanting Fox to make a home video distribution profit off the OOT, which is negligible anyway.* Like I said, they should just give Fox theatrical distribution rights on EpVII in exchange for home video on the existing films.

*Assuming, as we've already speculated, that GL didn't have some clause in the deal about the original versions never seeing the light of day.

Yeah, after Disney bought Marvel in '09, they didn't want to wait until the Paramount distribution deal expired, so they bought Paramount out of Avengers and Iron Man 3 (Paramount still handled Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America). But yes, as Akwat Kbrana said, part of the deal included the Paramount logo showing up anyway. If I remember correctly, the Marvel logo actually appears before the Paramount logo at the start of The Avengers.

I'm assuming Iron Man 3 is all that's leftover from the Paramount deal. I can't imagine a Disney logo showing up in the trailer for Thor 2. It'll probably just be the Marvel Studios logo and that's all, same for the start of the movie itself.

Likewise, I can't imagine a Disney logo showing up in front of Episode VII. If they distribute, I would think we'd open with the Lucasfilm logo and go straight into "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."

Oh, and as for the whole Fox thing, I think it's totally possible since Disney's not gonna want to wait until 2020 to get their hands on Episodes I-VI. They're gonna have to cut a deal to get Episode IV anyway, since Fox owns those rights in perpetuity. When you consider all of this, that percentage really does seem quite small. It would be worth it for Disney to give Fox theatrical rights in exchange for the six existing films.

It's worth noting that we still haven't seen a 3D blu-ray release of TPM. Perhaps this Disney deal was already in the works behind closed doors way back in February and that's the reason why (but who knows).

If I had my way, I'd somehow make sure that any future "Episodes" had the Fox fanfare at the beginning. Who is to say Disney-Lucasfilm won't want to eventually do X, XI and XII (or even XIII, XIV and XV)?

SilverWook said:

Disney's POTC films and Tron Legacy are good examples of all credits at the end.

The opening title and crawl are too iconic for Disney to mess with. I'm keeping my fingers crossed some sort of distribution deal is cut to allow the Fox fanfare and logo to remain. A silent Disney logo like the first POTC film had might precede it though.

Actually, the first POTC movie didn't have an opening Disney logo at all . It literally opened with the title shot. The "silent logo" was at the very end, after the end credits and the little after-credits scene with the monkey.

Anyway, I've been hoping the exact same thing as you in regards to the Fox fanfare. I don't see why it would be completely out the realm of possibility, either. Fox would only need to be given the theatrical distribution rights. Disney could keep everything else for themselves (dvd/blu-ray, television, streaming, etc). The vast majority of the box office gross would still be going to Lucasfilm, and therefore Disney.

So I guess the big reason he directed it himself was pretty straightforward then:

He started off as a director and then became the man in charge of a company. When he finally had enough money to self-finance a prequel trilogy, he wanted to make sure every decision being made on the movie was a sound one, business-wise. So, why not go back to being the director instead of going through a middle-man producer?

Yeah, never thought of it that way.