When Disney purchased Lucasfilm four years ago for $4.05 billion, even with all that money on the table, there were some still things that were off limits — namely, the original film. 20th Century Fox retains distribution rights to “Star Wars: A New Hope” in perpetuity — as well as theatrical, nontheatrical and home video rights worldwide for the previously released saga films through 2020. However, it would appear that Lucasfilm is starting to take a look in the vault.
In an interview with Little White Lies, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” director Gareth Edwards revealed a spiffy new print of George Lucas‘ original is hot off the press.
“On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John [Knoll], our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of ‘A New Hope’ — it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it,” he said.
READ MORE: The Best & Worst Of ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’
Of course, this begs so many questions: Is it the long-sought-after original theatrical version? Or is it George Lucas’ later Special Edition version with added special effects and scenes? Will Han shoot first? Moreover, when will it be seen?
As I mentioned above, Fox still has the distribution rights, and next year is the 40th anniversary of “Star Wars.” It’s entirely possible that Fox releases the original next year, and brings it to home video too — they don’t need any cooperation from Disney, and it would be a huge hit. That said, they’ll likely still get in touch with the mouse house to figure out how to best maximize the opportunity, especially with “Star Wars: Episode VIII” on the horizon. (Imagine if the first teaser for the ‘VIII’ came in front of the re-release of ‘A New Hope’? That would be something).
All this to say, let’s hope it’s just the start of the cleanup of the rest of the movies to make ’em look better than ever and hopefully, fans will finally get the chance to choose between the original versions and Lucas’ bedazzled cuts.
Check out all of our “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” coverage here.
I’ll watch it at least 10 times in the theater.
All this to say, let’s hope it’s just the start of the cleanup of the rest of the movies to make ’em look better than ever and hopefully, fans will finally get the chance to choose between the original versions and Lucas’ bedazzled cuts.
I kinda actually want it to be the special editions, but with modern day cgi (Or replace those scenes with animatronics, costumes etc. the deleted scenes from it i.e. the scenes with Biggs that were cut out, restoring it to han shooting first, and adding a Rebels character or two in the background!
The scene’s with Biggs were badly acted and pointless. That’s why they were cut out.
Get rid of Greedo shooting first, and Vader’s “Nooo… NOOOOOOO!!!!!” from RotJ. That’s all I really need to make me happy.
Emmm… that was Revenge of the Sith and completely unrelated to this…
No, that was Return of the Jedi. Like he stated.
You’re not watching the “newest” version of RotJ if you haven’t heard the “no”. It is definitely there.
https://youtu.be/O3u70WELSEg?t=18
I didn’t say it wasn’t there. I was agreeing with the OP.
Nope. It was both of them, dude. The last butChering on the Blu-Ray, Vader now yells “no” before he grabs the Emperor and chucks him down the shaft.
Mr. Gilmore, if you have watched the Blu-Rays of the original trilogy then you will know that I am referring to the added No’s of Darth Vader as he watches The Emperor zap Luke.
The scene with Jabba outside the Falcon is also bad, unnecessary, and continuity-breaking.
Yep, it’s ok with most of SE stuff in it… as long as Han shoots first, and you leave out the Jabba scene.
Not holding my breath on the Theatrical Editions being available outside of that slapped-together laserdisc transfer they threw on a DVD set.
Disney already release The Special Edition versions Digitally in 4K theatrically last year . I saw them, together w/ the prequel Trilogy the day Episode VII premiered.
If only that were true!
@therightclique – IT’s TRUE ! How the hell did ANYONE MISS THIS? It was a ONE DAY EVENT in very limited – select markets. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/841351e42c4c200e30240f879f562060c3296af0ea8ade127968f8d08237d4b4.jpg
Nothing in that poster says “4K restoration”
nope.
Where was they ‘shown’. Because if Disney already had 4k digital versions of the original films, then they would’ve done this sort of thing everywhere.
In about 100 theatres – One Day Only – on the day of the premier of Episode VII. You had to buy a pass for all 7 films for $50bucks. I saw it in Sony 4K Digital @ Regal Cinemas Stonecrest at Piper Glen 22 & IMAX in North Carolina. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/841351e42c4c200e30240f879f562060c3296af0ea8ade127968f8d08237d4b4.jpg
Just because the theatre has a Sony 4K projector doesn’t mean that the movie was sourced from a 4K master.
@chuckkahn:disqus Fair enough. You may (?) be correct.For the record- I do not know @ what resolution the 35mm film prints ( from the Special Edition) were sourced from for this event. However, as a former IA certified projectionist of 7 years – I have built and witnessed thousands of 35mm prints – and I even wrote a quality control program for Lucasfilm’s THX TAP Dept- and they even adopted some of my idea’s in their guideline in 1999. I did see the Special Edition of A New Hope in 35mm in 1997 over a dozen times and Empire twice. This transfer was the 1st time the Original Trilogy was presented in Digital. I can stated for the record- It was the absolute cleanest – sharpest image I’ve ever witnessed of the Trilogy. I was so impressed – that during the intermission between Ep. VI:RotJ & Ep. VII:TFA I when over and spoke to the projectionist ( he opened the glass window in front of the projector when I taped on it ) and asked him if he knew if this was a 4K transfer? He stated that he did not know the answer to that. However- he was able to say – that the file sizes on the drive that contained the Original Trilogy were larger for each movie “by a mile” over Ep.VII – which was Not only 4K – it was also in Digital 3D. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fd4439df69b2c63b66b72b291d714ff940957ce143d461ea6bdcc2bf6e42a1f.jpg
Well the 4K version is rumoured to have been done back in 2012. I wish theatres had advertised that they were screening a 4K restoration. I would have liked to have seen it.
http://thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2014/07/16/The-Star-Wars-Trilogy-has-a-New-Official-Master-in-4K
I know- right? And perhaps it was done on the low down. This event was NOT heavily advertised. You really had to go the extra mile to get these tickets. I interview people in the theatre who came from up 5 hours away to witness this ( this theatre was the 2 1/2 hours from me.) Perhaps Disney struct a deal w/ Fox for this one time only showing — in which Disney was NOT allowed by contract to advertise this event on TV- only on the web? All I know is that tickets sold for this event – counted for the boxoffice numbers for The Force Awakens – as in – the ticket holder was paying $50bucks for TFA Ticket – and getting to view the two other Trilogy’s for free .
I do NOT know what the background story is – other than to say I remember seeing that Disney ( could have been just an internet rumor ? ) announced in early 2016 that they were planning of releasing the Original trilogy back to theatres again before the release of Rogue One – and while a wide release Never Happened – The small independant Alamo Drafthouse theatre chain DID present The Original Trilogy again @ a One Day Only Event @ only 3 of their Theatre locations on Sat. August 25th and advertised this as “an incredibly rare digital screenings of the Special Edition versions of A NEW HOPE, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and THE RETURN OF THE JEDI. While I wasn’t there to witness this moment – they did post this picture to their FB page. Here’s the link to that Event: https://drafthouse.com/event/star-wars
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d1ad3ae52cfb4431438f7d7134a49aa7121059558f6d8af618afc321101a1be.jpg
The tickets were readily available in my area (Toronto) on the day after The Force Awakens tickets went on sale. (People were tweeting Cineplex furiously when the Marathon tickets didn’t appear alongside the episode 7 ticket sales that night.) I was just happy to have tickets for episode 7 so I didn’t look into getting additional tickets for the episode 1-6 screening.
Hey @chuckkahn:disqus Just found the Original Theatre list – thought I’d share :
http://www.starwarsunderworld.com/2015/10/star-wars-movie-marathon-details.html
please be unaltered version
They’ve already altered the film. Pray they don’t alter it any further.
Although adding some variations of Stormtroopers from Rogue One and KX droids would make movies more intergrated.
Please restore a vandalized cinematic treasure…
*SIGHS*. COME ON GUYS. Even If try were able to restore the film unaltered in 4K, it will never publicly see the light of day. Whilst officially unconfirmed, knowing wat we know about George Lucas, do you not believe that he didnt include conditions in the sale if LFL that would prevent the release of star wars films that aren’t his “final cut” without his permission? My understanding is the 2011 blue ray versions of I-VI are the only versions of the film that fox or Disney have ownership of without GLs expressed permission.
Disney bought the future of star wars, not the past.
And for those who are about to say “he sold to Disney for $4bil he has no say…” Lucas said that he could have gotten more $ but chose Disney because they were the safest choice in protecting his legacy. If you honestly think that he has no say on certain aspects of his legacy even after selling up, then you don’t know GL.
But GL already allowed the non-SE versions to be sold on DVD (albeit in crummy non-anamorphic transfers from 1993) so he’s not so dead-set against it. And now it would be Disney’s expense to restore the originals properly, not his.
If you’re itching for unaltered and best quality, look up “Despecialized Edition” – there’s one for each “original trilogy” movie (as in 1977 to 1983), and uses MULTIPLE sources (DVD, Laserdisc, original film print) to make it 720p HD quality WITHOUT the Special Edition changes, hence the name.
I hope they do both. Also have mixes like the original but with remastered sound.
One thing, I really think they should do another god damn pass on the bad Special Edition effects.
Disney knows how much the fans want the unaltered cuts of the original trilogy. They are just waiting on distribution rights to transfer from Fox (2020). Soon as they get those rights, you can be sure we will be getting a 4k restoration bluray release. Disney knows every Star Wars fan on the planet will rush to grab those.
Please restore a vandalized cinematic treasure…
One that won an academy award for film editing…
Help up, Disney. You’re our only hope…
It can be ‘altered” editions, just needs to be altered in the right way.
– Han shoots first
– No Jabba in Ep IV
– No stupid droids and creatures in Mos Eisley getting in the way of everything
– Keep Death Star Additions
– Keep the extra X-Wings in Death Star Battle
– Keep changes made to Ep. V (of which there were very few)
– Remove the extra song in Jabba’s Palace in Ep VI
– Remove Darth’s NO in Ep VI
That’s about it, the rest of the changes can stay. I’m even ok with Young Anakin at the end of ROTJ.
I wouldn’t miss the Ep.V changes (interrupting our heroes escape from Cloud City with Vader heading to the Executor with obvious ROTJ footage of him landing, Slave I following the Falcon some more, windows on the Cloud City hallways).
>not 8k
>you had one job
I was watching Ep.IV a month ago and the Jabba scene really ruins the reveal of the Falcon. In the original cut the audience saw it the first time Luke saw it (plus there was that nice John WIlliams reveal music over it). Now the first time we see the Falcon it is just in the background of some crummy 1997 cgi Jabba.
Never thought of it like that before – but yeah you are right – it does. Great point.
“Will Han shoot first?”
WROOOOOOONG
The question is “will Greedo shoot at all?” and if the answer is yes then the whole thing can be discarded. Greedo didn’t shoot.
Woody Harrelson will shoot first.
Greedo DIDN’T shoot. Han shot. Not first. He just shot.
“Han just shot” won’t sell as many t-shirts.
The proper tag line would be “Greedo didn’t shoot” or the more dramatic sounding but kind of nonsensical “Greedo never shot”. I mean, I’m sure the guy shot at least once, it would be weird for a gun owner to never have shot it before. But yeah.