The Force is with Blu-ray: Star Wars Comes to Hi-Def 2011
This weekend was a big event for Star Wars nerds in Orlando, Florida. Star Wars Celebration V, a convention produced by fans for fans that celebrates all things Star Wars, had a special “main event” with George Lucas as the main guest. In the main event, which was moderated by Jon Stewart, George Lucas announced to the joyous fanboy crowd that Star Wars is coming to Blu-ray. Yes, all 6 of them.
“I wish I could say it’s coming out this year, but it’s coming out next year”
Expect a Fall 2011 release. He then goes on to talk about what’s going to be special about the Blu-ray release, saying that the specials will be different, joking that fans will have seen enough behind the scenes footage for a lifetime. One of the new materials is this deleted scene with Luke Skywalker’s original into for Return of the Jedi, which was introduced by Mark Hamill at the event.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdJ0E7HbTKc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Carrie Fisher also took the stage and her comments are funny.
“Did you put the nude scenes back in?” She then turns to the crowd, “There was a huge me and Jabba porn scene. That’s what got me into drugs.”
I love it when stars embrace what made them famous. The New York Times had an interview with Mr. Lucas about the release. Lucas said that the version of the original trilogy would be the “special edition” version because of time and money to try to restore the “classic” version. Fair enough.
“You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally. It’s a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.”
“We’ve been working on them for quite a while, but still, there are pipelines. Unfortunately, the recent releases get priority over what we call the classic versions of things.”
So yes, if you were waiting for the “classic” version, I guess you’ll have to wait longer.
