Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Sure they can wait it out. Just saying, they don't have to. Frankly, sitting on it is a cheap ass lazy solution. LFL will make more off a release under the current deals than fox will. So, what's the big damn deal? It makes more sense to air the OT now, to up the hype for E7 than it does to do it in 2020 after E9 has been out a year.

Fox can't be getting that much out of the deals that it makes a re-release unprofitable for LFL. If that was true, they'd never have re-released them in the past. Holding out for 5 more years so you don't have to pay fox their, what? 15-20%? is just flat out corporate greed.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Sure they can wait it out. Just saying, they don't have to. Frankly, sitting on it is a cheap ass lazy solution. LFL will make more off a release under the current deals than fox will. So, what's the big damn deal? It makes more sense to air the OT now, to up the hype for E7 than it does to do it in 2020 after E9 has been out a year.

Fox can't be getting that much out of the deals that it makes a re-release unprofitable for LFL. If that was true, they'd never have re-released them in the past. Holding out for 5 more years so you don't have to pay fox their, what? 15-20%? is just flat out corporate greed.

But they are releasing the SE OT under the LucasFilm/Fox agreement. I just bought all 6 on iTunes, the streaming deal is happening right before Ep. 7, that's them working with Fox under the existing licensing distribution guidelines to capitalize on the hype. What you are talking about is a very niche, specialty release that is not economically viable for Disney to do until they control 100% of the rights on 5 films. LucasFilm was a private company and George did whatever he wanted. Disney is a publicly traded company and they do whats best for shareholders. Paying Fox for something they get for free in 5 years is contrary to that obligation. ANH is the biggest question.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I say Disney should work on getting ANH now and wait for the other films to revert in five years. It may not be the whole trilogy, but having the first and original Star Wars film would still be super important. If the rights totally belong to Fox even beyond the 2020 deadline, why wait? And instead of tossing six films on a restoration studio, have them focus solely on one of them. Cripes, it's what they did with the Indiana Jones films. Restore Raiders with the technology we have now and just toss what we did years ago with the other movies onto the disk with less compression.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I say Disney should work on getting ANH now and wait for the other films to revert in five years. It may not be the whole trilogy, but having the first and original Star Wars film would still be super important. If the rights totally belong to Fox even beyond the 2020 deadline, why wait? And instead of tossing six films on a restoration studio, have them focus solely on one of them. Cripes, it's what they did with the Indiana Jones films. Restore Raiders with the technology we have now and just toss what we did years ago with the other movies onto the disk with less compression.

Because the only value of owning ANH would be to do a non-SE release, and that is of limited value.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I can potentially see them doing it just to please the old school fans just as they are making an effort to resort back to the old style of Star Wars and move away from prequel type styles.Everything from design to movie making techniques. And don't get me wrong I am no prequel hater but who better to please than the most vocal of all Star Wars fans on the internet. The old school fans. :)


Ben



Ben
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp. I'd like to see the original, unaltered, theatrical versions of the Original Trilogy movies get a proper, respectful release on DVD or Blu-Ray as much as anyone, but the rumor of it happening has raised it's ugly head so many times over the years that I've gotten very pessimistic about it ever happening. I'll feel more optimistic when/if I see an official announcement from Disney and/or Lucasfilm, but until then I'm not getting my hopes up.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I'd definitely be right in line with you guys to buy a copy of the unaltered OT blu-rays if they were to release them, but I actually like/am indifferent towards a majority of the changes that were made for the SEs and beyond. If the OOT were never to be officially released, I'm not going to cry or curse Disney, or GL, or Fox or whoever for "raping my childhood" or some other such nonsense. I'm happy with what I already have. I may be alone in that, but that's how I feel about the situation.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Maybe Lucas told Landis about a real plan to do the original movies, but something Disney is planning on releasing a few years from now after the rights have reverted. Disney does think very long term. Just the film resto process itself would take some time.

On the other hand Disney probably wants a fresh set of copies of the OT to be available for the SW mania that is coming in the next few months. They might not mind just giving Fox a percentage right now.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Because the only value of owning ANH would be to do a non-SE release, and that is of limited value.

To expand on this point -- because I think it will be necessary, given the level of fandom here -- those of us who post to these forms, for the most part, are HUGE fans of Star Wars. We are the outliers in society. The vast majority of the public doesn't really care about the SE changes. Plus, the vast majority of the public doesn't care about film preservation and history, either, so they're more inclined to say "Who cares? They made the f/x look better and more modern instead of the cheesy 70s stuff." I recognize that this mindset is totally alien to most people here, but it really does exist out there.

As a result, anyone who was gonna buy the films on any home media format...probably already has them. The only difference is the digital release and/or a Netflix deal which, by the way, will also severely cut into the market appetite for another home release.

The end result is that the OOT is, essentially, a niche product. It's got a very limited but very vocal audience. But the majority of the public just doesn't care much. That's not to say that it's of NO value whatsoever, but rather that it is of LIMITED value.

I can potentially see them doing it just to please the old school fans just as they are making an effort to resort back to the old style of Star Wars and move away from prequel type styles.Everything from design to movie making techniques. And don't get me wrong I am no prequel hater but who better to please than the most vocal of all Star Wars fans on the internet. The old school fans. :)


Ben



Ben

That's a nice thought, but from my understanding, it's not how filmmaking works as a business. If anything, fans are generally considered a "given." You know they're gonna show up. They're fans. So, you don't actually have to work very hard to appease them. People who hated the design of the new Enterprise in JJTrek because they knew that warp nacelles of that shape would directly interfere with the warp drive's functionality because of what it said on the Technical Readout Manual on page 5....they still went to see the film.

Likewise, when a film fails the way the new Fantastic Four film did, it's not because the fans stayed home (although that didn't help). It's because everyone else stayed home, too. The fans might publicize what's wrong with the film, but the people who'll be far more effective at that are the critics who complain about how the third act doesn't wrap up the story, rather than complaining that the Thing's rock skin is supposed to be orange and not brown.

My point here is that old school, hardcore fans...are generally ignored by studios because they don't need to please them. That's why they're less likely to cater to them.

Maybe Lucas told Landis about a real plan to do the original movies, but something Disney is planning on releasing a few years from now after the rights have reverted. Disney does think very long term. Just the film resto process itself would take some time.

On the other hand Disney probably wants a fresh set of copies of the OT to be available for the SW mania that is coming in the next few months. They might not mind just giving Fox a percentage right now.

See, this is what I think is more likely.

My guess is that Disney is, indeed, in some process to remaster and restore the OT. My guess is that, to do that, they'll need to go back to the negatives (or an interpositive, or whatever their source material is). They'll scan the films in at 4K and maybe 8K for potential future use.

Then they'll sit on them.

In 5 years, they get the entire PT back and 2 of the 3 OT films back, for free. At that point, they'll be in a much better bargaining position to negotiate a deal with Fox to buy ANH back, or license the distribution rights back from Fox, or do a revenue sharing deal.

Once that's done, my bet is that they will ONLY release an OOT in some form of mega-set. By that point, the new trilogy will be out and already on home media. If I had to guess, the release would be as follows: Individual trilogy sets at a remastered 4K or 8K or whatever (by 2020, it's very possible that people will have purchased 4K or 8K displays in greater numbers), containing the same ol' PT, the same ol' SE OT, and the same ol' sequel trilogy (ST). About 6-12 months after that, either around Christmas time or around the time of one of the anthology film releases, they'll announce -- for the first time in over 20 years -- the return of the theatrical OT, in glorious remastered edition....as part of this exclusive, limited edition 12 disc set, with collectible [lightsabre/Falcon/helmet replica, varying by retailer].

I'd say the only major question will be whether they'll try to redo the digital additions of the SE, or scrap that altogether as being too costly. But on the other hand, if the theory is that general consumers prefer the SE version, they'll pay to have them redone in order to continue making the films viable.


For that matter, the remastered OOT might be used as part of a focus group, where they have people watch both versions or watch clips from both versions and say which they prefer. Who knows.



Long story short, I don't think we're gonna see a re-release before 2021. Which is fine, because my kid will be 5 at that point, which I think is a solid age to first see the films. :)
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

It's gonna be so anticlimactic when this crap finally comes out. Lol!
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

The more I think about it, the more I suspect Disney will weigh the OOT over the SE.


Look at Disney's history with its own "special effects" movies. They don't fix rough-looking animation shots in their own stuff from decades ago. Their resto people will bite & claw for every scrap of resolution quality they can get, but they don't normally change the work itself beyond that.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

One thing Disney does well at is their attention to quality reproduction of imagery for the BluRay market. The work they have done in the classic old animated films, such as Cinderella.... completely mind-blowing at how well they managed to restore each frame of that film. I'm not an avid Cinderella fan, but I have seen it when it's been on TV and VHS and those were just transfers from the film from old methods. These new ones are absolutely superb. No dust particles, no gate weave at all in the opening credits... It almost looks like they went back and re-did each cell frame capture or something. How they got that level of quality from the print is pretty incredible.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

The end result is that the OOT is, essentially, a niche product. It's got a very limited but very vocal audience. But the majority of the public just doesn't care much. That's not to say that it's of NO value whatsoever, but rather that it is of LIMITED value.

When you write it like that, it's very convincing and makes perfect sense. You even convinced me, until I thought about it more and realized that not only are you incorrect, but the industry has already proven you incorrect many times on this point.

Multiple versions bring in big money, even for movies with less than a fraction of Star Wars popularity, and this is not 1985 where we can say that only geeks will care. Nowadays you're talking about a genre big enough to warrant it's own section of an amusement park.

The sentence "Version not released in 25 years" is worth enough money that disney has probably tried to trademark the words at least once. As a company they practically invented, and proved the concept that: a version not released for decades is absolutely going to bring in a big smelly pile of cash, even for movies that have been shown on free TV for years, AND are less popular than Star Wars. It's not only been proven, but this is the company that proved it.


Now that doesn't mean they wont wait. The point about them being a long term company is true. If they think they can make more by waiting they will wait, but they'll never say "Oh not enough people will buy another version." They already know that's not true.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

When you write it like that, it's very convincing and makes perfect sense. You even convinced me, until I thought about it more and realized that not only are you incorrect, but the industry has already proven you incorrect many times on this point.

Multiple versions bring in big money, even for movies with less than a fraction of Star Wars popularity, and this is not 1985 where we can say that only geeks will care. Nowadays you're talking about a genre big enough to warrant it's own section of an amusement park.

The sentence "Version not released in 25 years" is worth enough money that disney has probably tried to trademark the words at least once. As a company they practically invented, and proved the concept that: a version not released for decades is absolutely going to bring in a big smelly pile of cash, even for movies that have been shown on free TV for years, AND are less popular than Star Wars. It's not only been proven, but this is the company that proved it.


Now that doesn't mean they wont wait. The point about them being a long term company is true. If they think they can make more by waiting they will wait, but they'll never say "Oh not enough people will buy another version." They already know that's not true.

Dan is 100% correct. Disney will do nothing until the distribution rights revert back to them in 2020. Then they can consider the disposition of ANH and place a monetary value on what owning those rights may be worth to them and make an offer to Fox. Fox can decline or play hard ball but the economic reality is that ANH has a limited value that is likely to become less valuable over time. In 2020 there will be 12 Star Wars films with more coming. There will be new generations of fans who will be less interested in ANH and more interested in the new content. So that will be the likely financial considerations both companies will be considering. Dan's not saying it won't eventually happen, nor am I, but this is the context in which it will happen.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Bryan,.....could you PM me the lottery results for this weekend?,....please:rolleyes

J
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

I could see this released as a special (limited?) run in order to both test the market and to appease the older fans (like me). I would like to see the packaging design depart completely from the SE packaging (e.g. using paper/board with the artwork from original posters, perhaps?) So as not to confound the existing SE market.
 
Re: Star Wars OT UNALTERED Bluray!!!

Dan is 100% correct. Disney will do nothing until the distribution rights revert back to them in 2020. Then they can consider the disposition of ANH and place a monetary value on what owning those rights may be worth to them and make an offer to Fox. Fox can decline or play hard ball but the economic reality is that ANH has a limited value that is likely to become less valuable over time. In 2020 there will be 12 Star Wars films with more coming. There will be new generations of fans who will be less interested in ANH and more interested in the new content. So that will be the likely financial considerations both companies will be considering. Dan's not saying it won't eventually happen, nor am I, but this is the context in which it will happen.

I don't disagree with that part. So...50% correct. I agree they will wait if it turns out waiting is worth more.

As I said, my disagreement is with the claim that it only has a very small appeal. Unreleased versions of movies, even far less popular movies, have moved the needle before.
 
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