I can’t imagine Fox is making more by selling the Special Editions alone than they would be making by selling the Special Editions plus the original unedited films.
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From Harmy himself:
Team Negative 1 just released their “Star Wars: 35mm Silver Screen Theatrical Version”
It is a full 35mm transfer with cleanup and it looks awesome!
Until I can make a new version of Despecialized (and this will be an invaluable asset in doing that) I would definitely recommend Team Negative 1’s version over Despecialized v2.5.
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Again Fox isn’t the point, because Fox doesn’t necessarily have a say in the matter. We can’t be sure but it’s possible they could refuse to distribute whatever release Disney plans. But we can’t say how that would end without seeing the deal. Breach of contract suit? Rights reverting to Lucas film? A blocked release? None of which makes sense because yeah both Fox and Lucas Film/Disney stand to make more by selling both. But they certainly can’t move on any of this on their own. And I’m sure Fox is on that. I’m sure they’ve been on first Lucas and now Disney to put something on paper and announce a release so they can exploit their end of the distribution deal before most of it goes away. But Disney stands to make even more money if they just wait a couple years.
The hold up before Lucas Film sold was that Lucas refused to do it. From the minute Disney bought him out there have been rumors swirling about an eventual release. With the stated rational for it not being announced immediately being the poor quality of the non-special editioned materials. The coincidental fact that Fox’s rights are also expiring soon just means that Disney has a compelling motivation to wait a little longer, instead of announcing now. Or immediately after the buy out. Or to avoid actually putting anything in motion, signing any binding agreements, working with Fox in a way that might artificially extend Fox’s ability to make money off whatever gets put out.
Fox’s rights on everything but A New Hope expire in 2020. I don’t think you’ll be seeing anything like an OT re-release, less obnoxious version of the Special Edition, or reworkings of the Prequels before then. Simple because it happens pretty soon, and Lucas Film retaking 90% of what they’d otherwise have to pay to Fox with zero effort or cost is a really good motivation to wait. Especially since the bulk of what their going to be bringing in will be from the new films not future releases of the old ones.
Any scenario where the two parties don’t strike a deal means at least four years of leaving potential movie sale revenues on the table. We don’t even know if there’s going to be a substantial market for DVDs or Blu-Ray discs by 2020—maybe most consumers will have transitioned away from physical media by then. Sales delayed may well mean sales lost.
If Disney and Fox can’t work something out it’s a lose-lose situation and all their lawyers should be fired for being dunderheads.
I’m guessing U R >30yo
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I don’t disagree. I just don’t see it happening. There’s a really compelling motivation for Fox to seek such a deal, and I’m sure they are. But Disney tends to do weird things when it comes to releasing old material. Remember the whole Disney Vault thing? Their classics are (or were?) put out as limited releases on a schedule. Recurring periodically. The whole thing intended to inflate the retail cost by presenting them as collectibles. Clenching their cheeks and waiting to minimize the distributor they’re forced to work with’s share of the profits is exactly the sort of thing they like to do.
Fox’s deal is on “theatrical, non-theatrical, and home video” distribution (per the wookiepedia article). However any of it gets released, for the next 4 years Fox gets a piece of every movie but The Force Awakens. After 2020, however any of it gets released Fox only gets a piece of A New Hope.
And its not something their lawyers need to come to an agreement on. There’s already an agreement. I’m not aware of any actual dispute. As far as I understand it there’s nothing in the Fox deal that prevents anything from coming out at any point people would like it to. But any new agreement Fox would be looking for would be to extend the distribution deal or create a release while it still stands. Any deal Disney would be looking for would be to end the distribution deal, reduce Fox’s pay out, and get at Fox’s perpetual rights on A New Hope. Neither of which makes any sense for the other party to consider (aside from maybe getting at distribution of A New Hope)
While it would arguably be smarter to get something out now to make money in the mean time, just working under the current deal, Disney appears to be happy to stall for accounting reasons. We’ll probably see announcements for the theatrical cut, less jacked up special editions, and recut prequels sometime after 2020 (and probably pretty rapidly). We might see Disney buying out Fox’s stake in A New Hope (or at least attempting to) as well around that time. When its cheaper because its one movie, not six.
I don’t believe that @arteitle is arguing that the changes made by Lucas were improvements. I believe they were arguing semantics.
As in the original copies weren’t fucked to begin with so they couldn’t be defucked. Where I was was implying that with each “enchanced” (read - fucked with) commercial release, a release of an original copy (legal or not) restoring the original with light touch ups as being “defucked”.
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Yes, that’s a reasonable comparison to make.
Han Shot Solo?
Solo Money Shot?
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Did y’all notice that the team calls themselves ‘Team Negative One’ but for some reason the article and other sources refer to them as ‘Team Negative 1’?
Funny that eh?
That’s right, but why do you guess that? Because I read the article and understand that this version predates the special editions by 20 years?
That’s right, there’s a big difference between other efforts to de-specialize the special editions, which started with the SE and worked backwards to try to restore the original, and this effort, which used the original version to begin with. It does seem revisionist to call the original the “de-Lucased” version, because he created, wrote, and directed it, and without him it wouldn’t exist.
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Star Wars sans Lucas? Here you go:
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A digitized version of the original, original versions of the first 3 films, has been around for decades. I have the boxed set.
Is that the laserdisc? I’ve got rips of them - I gather the one problem people have is that it’s not anamorphic-widescreen, which is apparently bad but I always forget why (seriously - I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia about a dozen times but it never gets retained).
This new print doing the rounds is 22 GB, so don’t try to grab it if you’re on a cap 
although someone’s already brought it down to 9 GB.
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Easy there! Stalin?
Besides, isn’t restoting the old version more like adding Trotsky back into the photos? The complaint was not just that Lucas changed the photo but tried to hide that he changed the photo.
So there you have it. I accidentally helped compare George Lucas to Stalin. 
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As it says on the cover in my previous post’s picture, “Widescreen Collector’s Edition”. On the back (I just grabbed mine off the shelf), it’s got the “THX Certified LaserDisc” logo. Also, these are in CAV format, rather then CLV, so you get supersharp freeze frames and slo-mo on any machine. There are 3 main sleeves inside, one for each movie, and inside each of those, the discs themselves are in individual sleeves. Those have an inner glassine lining, and outside are glossy cardboard, black with a starfield. Also included is 14 page Program, which includes the credits for the LaserDisc conversion, brief interviews, and a listing of the chapter stops in all 18 disc sides. But wait, there’s more! Also included is the hardcover book George Lucas - The Creative Impulse (©1992) with an embossed, sort-of-holographic X-Wing / TIE Fighter battle on the cover.
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Essentially, a DVD movie is 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels high. When a cinemascope film is presented using letterbox, only about 280 of those vertical pixels are used to display what’s been filmed. The other 200 pixels (100 above, 100 below) are just black lines. When anamorphic DVDs are encoded (with rectangular pixels) , the film content gets about 380 lines, and the residual matte gets 50 lines on to 50 lines on the bottom. The result is a more detailed image when displayed on a screen that can handle rectangular pixels-- and such screens are nearly universal these days.
http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/term.cfm/letterbox
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For the laserdiscs, they may have been digitized at some point in the production process, but the final product is not stored digitally, it’s analog.
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