Fans had to wait until 2004 to get the DVD versions of the original Star Wars trilogy, and the wait has been similarly long for the high-def disc releases of any Star Wars films. The wait will end in 2011, with the six movies releasing as part of a Blu-ray box set with documentary features and previously unseen footage.
“We’ve been wanting to do it as soon as we possibly could, but we just wanted to do it when enough people would be able to buy it and see it,” explained George Lucas from the Star Wars Celebration V convention.
“The original trilogy will appear in its digitally altered special edition form from the DVD release. Attempting to head off any complaints,” Lucas said that releasing the original versions on Blu-ray is kind of an oxymoron because the quality of the original is not very good. “You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally, he added. 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.”
“The 2011 release date is due to a combination of ongoing work and other factors. We ve been working on them for quite a while but still, there are pipelines,” said Lucas. “Unfortunately, the recent releases get priority over what we call the classic versions of things.”
Source: New York Times
