Complicated is right. In order to get Star Wars made (Episode IV, A New Hope, whatever you call it) Mr. Lucas had to give ownership of the movie to Fox. After it became a success he was in a much better position to negotiate ownership of the other Original Trilogy movies, and by the time he made the Prequel Trilogy movies he had already formed Lucasfilm, so he owned them outright. As I understand it, Disney owns five of the six movies, but Fox owns the distribution rights to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi until the year 2020, at which time those rights go to Disney/Lucasfilm and they're free to do whatever they want with them. But Fox owns the complete rights to A New Hope in perpetuity, so Disney/Lucasfilm can't do anything with that movie without Fox's permission....From what I read, it's a remarkably complicated arrangement. If mrmory serves, Fox will still control the original films (not sure if that includes the prequels, but who cares about those?) until 2017ish, and after that will always control Star Wars. All very odd. I suspect Georgie is still in a huff that the fans hated his post 83 meddling, and wants to make it awkward for the new owners to release a nice copy of the originsl theatrical cuts.
If it's true that 20th Century Fox doesn't lose the rights to "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" until 2020, and will still own "Star Wars" (1977) even then, isn't it possible that they will try to put out Blu-rays of the original unaltered versions before 2020, to make money off of the original trilogy one last time before their rights expire?
Haha, think you just inspired me to see it again.....for what it is.......a freakin movie. All this other talk is just way too deep for me, I've got plenty of my own affairs to worry about.
Everyone involved knows there's money to be made from releasing the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi on DVD and Blu-Ray. Or is there?
The picture quality wouldn't be nearly good enough. As it is, there are fan-made HD preservations of the untouched original trilogy. For Fox or Disney to use VHS transfers as a source would make their official product vastly inferior to amateur fan-made projects already in existence. That wouldn't even be worth the effort.
Everyone involved knows there's money to be made from releasing the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi on DVD and Blu-Ray. Or is there?
George Lucas insists those versions no longer exist in any medium. I find that hard to believe because Lucasfilm had to transfer them from something to digital media in order for Mr. Lucas to create the first of his Special Edition versions. So for them to no longer exist, someone would have to have collected and deliberately destroyed every single copy of them. Even if that was true, surely Disney has the resources to locate at least one version of each of the original un-tampered-with movies in some format that they could transfer to digital media in order to restore them for DVD/Blu-Ray release. The question is whether or not Disney believes they can generate enough sales to cover the cost of such a restoration and still make a profit. Unfortunately for we "die hard" fans of the theatrical versions, there are a lot of people out there who simply don't care about which version of those movies they watch, and probably wouldn't spend the money on "inferior" versions.
To muddy the waters further, rumor has it that Mr. Lucas has somehow included language in the contract(s) (as part of the sale) that prevents Disney and/or Fox from releasing the original theatrical versions of those three movies in any form until after he is dead and gone. I'm not even sure if that's possible. But if it is, by the time we finally get a decent version of those movies for home viewing, DVD and Blu-Ray might be as extinct as Betamax videotapes.
That is true, but I don't see it being any worse quality than what the original film rolls would be in. After all, we all know how much Hollywood likes their "digitally remastered" movies. The deleted scenes released along with the Blu-Ray release were all in their original condition. If LucasFilm is going to transfer from the original film, they're going to have to clean it up anyway.
I could give a rats azz how much anyone is making and don't consider my 50 bucks a couple of weeks ago contribution to anything more than killing a few hours at a good show. I would have spent more at the spaghetti factory for a 1 hour dinner.
Even if it is old and in a poor state, film has inherently higher resolution than VHS masters. Even Blu-rays don't do full justice to all of the detail to be found on the original celluloid. No matter how many scratches or dust specks there are on the film, a film print is going to have infinitely more detail than an analog VHS transfer. To make the best restoration, it is necessary to work from the source with the most detail.
