Hey, so Thursday we were all full of pep over rumors that Disney/Lucasfilm would release the unaltered Star Wars Original Trilogy, without all those horrible Special Edition changes, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of 1977’s Star Wars. It now sounds like that’s a no-go. We’re crying too.
It started over at Making Star Wars, which cited several anonymous sources claiming Star Wars , The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi would be re-released in their “original edits,” concluding “I will be pretty surprised if this rumor doesn’t pan out.”
But according to Pablo Hidalgo, of the Lucasfilm Story Group, it’s not happening.
Hidalgo says we have only one person to blame. You can probably guess who:
C’mon George Lucas, stop being such a dick.
The Digital Bits also did some fantastic reporting on the rumor, actually getting some names on the record who confirmed that the negatives held by Disney are Special Edition versions only.
They actually got to name people at Disney AND Fox who confirmed the original negatives of Star Wars are conformed to the SEs. https://t.co/I1ByAWnlpP
— ManaByte (@ManaByte) February 24, 2017
This according to both Theo Gluck, Disney’s Director of Library Restoration and Preservation, and 20th Century Fox’s Shawn Belston (Fox holds the rights to the original Star Wars indefinitely and the other movies in the original and prequel trilogies into 2020). As a small consolation, Belston confirmed that the “trims” from the original negatives, from which the Special Editions were created, still exist. Film history hasn’t been completely destroyed, just locked deep in a vault.
So, while it doesn’t exactly prove that Disney and Lucasfilm aren’t working in secret on an unaltered re-release of the Star Wars movies, it does substantially undermine the inciting rumors. But there are still the Star Wars Despecialized Editions.
