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EXCLUSIVE: I learned of this decision just now from Lucasfilm‘s promotional partners who are telling me the studio now owned by Disney wants to focus only on “rebooting the franchise” with three new 
Star Wars films. This surprising decision follows the underwhelming box office performance of Episode I: The Phantom Menace re-released in 3D in February 2012. It debuted to only $23M domestically but maybe even more importantly hardcore fans felt it was yet another craven cash grab by George Lucas. Back in September 2010, Lucasfilm and then-distributor Fox announced that all 6 films in the Star Wars franchise would be converted to 3D. Episode II: Attack Of The Clones (first released on May 16, 2002) was to hit theaters in 3D on September 20th, 2013, while Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (first released on May 19, 2005) was to play in 3D on October 11, 2013. This news comes just days after Disney confirmed that J.J. Abrams will direct the new Star Wars: Episode VII scheduled to be released in 2015. It’s the first new Star Wars movie since 2005. Michael Arndt is writing the script. Disney bought Lucasfilm in October 2012 for $4 billion, with the Star Wars franchise obviously the jewel in the crown. At the time, Disney CEO Bob Iger said three more Star Wars films were in the pipeline.
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What a colossal waste of time that 3D detour was (which is what many of us said when it was announced).
And for all the people who hated the idea of Disney buying Lucasfilm… they seem to be making all of the good decisions Lucas was incapable of making while in charge.
Culdn’t have said it better myself!
Let’s not give Disney too. Uh credit for integrity. If Episode I 3D made decent box office they would have followed through. The decision is all about money.
I actually will give Disney credit on this one. Anyone with any sense and knowledge of Star Wars would tell you that if all films were re-released, episode would do the worst. I’m sure that if they kept the conversions going they would only get more and more money as they kept going. Anyone expecting a huge take-in from episode 1 is delusional.
you’ve gotta be crazy to think that JJA was a good decision
Then consider me crazy. I’m just thrilled Lucas won’t be sucking the life out of any more actors.
Hey Lucas did a good job when he was n charge
What a colossal waste of time all the prequels were.
I actually think this is a mistake. Re-releasing the original trilogy in theaters before the new Episode VII would be a smart promotional idea.
Agreed, but the original trilogy WASN’T 3D. Lucas was turning the original trilogy (which he seems to have a real disdain for) into rides/gimmicks.
Re-release the original trilogy as is aways was and people will come.
no…they were releasing the Prequel trilogy in 3d only, the Original trilogy would not of been redone for 3d
The original plan was for one STAR WARS film to be re-released per year in 3D, staring with EPISODE I. But since no one gave a shit about that pic, McCallum clarified Lucasfilm’s position as saying they’d release the the prequels one per year and, depending on box office, move onto the original trilogy…which was basically their way of saying, “Better cough up some money for the shitty ones if you wanna even have a chance of seeing the good ones.”
But, yeah, if Disney is smart, they’ll start talking with Fox — if they haven’t already — about getting A NEW HOPE, EMPIRE, and JEDI ready for 3D re-release over the next two years.
Very silly, as Episodes II and III would have looked great in 3D, given they were digitally shot and rendered throughout.
They would have looked like shit in 3D because they are shit.
@Dillan: “Very silly, as Episodes II and III would have looked great in 3D, given they were digitally shot and rendered throughout.”
Lets just say I am familiar with how things were being done on II and III, and this was not how it was being done. It was the same process used on Episode I. Also, the vast majority of the work for II and III was being done in India, whereas the first one had much more work being done in the states, with India as support.
Smart movie–the 3D releases would pretty much be negative advertising for the new films.
Can’t say I am disappointed, but I am surprised the company is so willing to shift so quickly from Lucas’ direction. Maybe there is hope for the future of the franchise, though.
Maybe this Disney deal wasn’t a bad idea after all.
I think I’d rather gouge out my own eyeballs than shell out $20 to watch Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen in 3D…
What about the original trilogy? I wouldn’t mind paying to see A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back in 3D.
Death to 3D
Good – you can put new frosting on old doughnuts but they’re still old doughnuts.
Screw you, people!
I expected to see all the movies in 3D at the theaters!
I did too! I must confess though, Episode I in 3d was disappointing in its sound quality. The picture was great, even beter than the original. The sound however, I noticed IMMEDIATLY! When we got home afterwards I immediatly googled and researched what happened, and discovered the transition from regular to 3d in regards to sound, is not only difficult, but yet to be done with dolby or THX. I have the opinion, half the Star Wars experience-is the highest quality of sound which Lucas did afterall perfect and invent.
Good for you Iger. Lucas is a pig and that was just another example of his greed. I guess 3 billion dollars is not enough for some people.
Yeah…he’s so “greedy” that every penny of that $4 billiio he made by selling the franchise was given to charity.
Good! Hopefully this means they are trying to preserve the integrity of the franchise. Hopefully that extends to preserving the original trilogy by restoring and releasing it on Blu-ray. That’s an easy win to get much love and enthusiasm from fans of the series.
“Preserve the integrity of the franchise.”
You must have not seen “the phantom menace” if you’re making this comment.
They’re just preserving their bottom line. 3D TPM was a bomb so they are cutting their losses.
To be honest, I’m slightly disappointed as I was really looking forward to seeing IV, V and VI in theatres again for the first time since 1997. Not for the cheesy 3D, but just to seem them on the big-screen again,
Go Disney! 3D is dead!
I wonder if it was the poor performance of Phantom Menace in 3D that finally made Lucas realize the prequels weren’t that good. In his defense, while there was a lot of fan backlash against the prequels, they all made plenty of money at the time (though each new movie made less than the one before).
Perhaps the fact Titanic in 3D did better than Phantom Menace caused George to finally listen to what the public has been saying, and maybe that’s what led him to step down from Lucasfilm? If that’s what happened, I’d have to say George Lucas has been ill-served by the people around him for a long, long time.
Actually Revenge of the Sith made more money than Attack of the Clones. So saying that each Prequel did worse isn’t an accurate statement. And what’s ironic is that the pattern was the same in the OT. A New Hope made the most money, and Empire Strikes Back made the least, which Return of the Jedi stood in the middle of them both.
Didn’t Fox get a say in this? Don’t they still own distribution rights to the original/existing SW films?
What? The conversions of Episodes II and III were already finished, what did they have to loose with releasing them? And Episode I actually made a lot of money for a 3D re-release of a movie already available on an high-def home video format a few months before.
Not only that, but watching the saga in theaters until 2015/16 would be a perfect marketing move for the sequel trilogy.
As someone would say: “I have a bad feeling about this…”
Yeah, rather strange actually seeing that both II and III were completed and set for this September. Stranger, too, I think, is the fact that the original trilogy won’t be screened, as it would serve a great promotional run for the impending release of new films, just like the Special Edition Trilogy did for Episode I.
Why do people keep assuming they won’t release the original trilogy? This is only about the 3D post-conversion. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d wager there has already been meetings within Disney about restoring and releasing the original cuts before Episode VII. That’s the kind of great press you want to pump up the new film.
Not saying it will happen, but I guarantee that they original cuts are going to be restored whether we know about it or not.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised that 2 amd 3 eventually may show up in 3D on Blue Ray, assuming Fox has the rights to do it – and if the conversions have actually been done. Why not, they would be feeding a growing 3D TV market looking for 3D product to look at.
You know what they should do instead? Release restored, unaltered versions of the original trilogy on Blu-ray. Makes a heck of a lot more sense.
There’s really no point, considering the masters were essentially deemed unusable after the Special Editions were made. The best quality version fo the unaltered original trilogy is the laserdisc version. The uncut DVD versions are made from the laserdisc transfer. Releasing them on blu-ray will not look or sound any better simply because of the low quality of the source material.
That’s absolutely not true. http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html
The original cuts can still be saved. Lucas just never wanted to do it (And he got Fox to pay for the SE restoration anyway). Disney’s not stupid… if you don’t think they’re going to protect the $4B assets that they just paid for (all of them), you don’t know Disney. Disney is big on keeping their catalog preserved and Star Wars is no exception. They’re not going to spend $4B and then simply toss aside preserving the original cuts.
I don’t buy that. There has to be copies of the negative sitting around somewhere. Plus the technology these days allows for more careful restoration from damaged negatives. Lawrence of Arabia was in horrible shape a few years ago when they did an 8k transfer. It took a few years for them to complete it, but it was worth it.
There are articles online about this, if you Google. The original camera negative of Star Wars (1977) was actually cut apart and turned into the negative for the Special Edition in the 90s, because all the other duplicate elements had faded or been ruined through overuse.
There are apparently a few existing Technicolor IB prints of Star Wars in its original form, including one Lucas owns, and they’re the highest quality versions remaining, but he’s not really lying when he says the original version “doesn’t exist anymore”.
I haven’t read anything about Empire or Jedi.
That’s complete and utter bs that Lucas put out there in the hopes that fans would stop complaining about the special editions.
Just the fact that the 1997 special editions were created means that they likely went back to the original negative and had it restored.
What Lucas is really trying to say in the hopes of shutting people at is that the only HD “video master” that exists is of the special editions. And that the last video master done of the orignal cuts was for the 1990 laserdsics.
But at anytime they could go back to the original elements (which I assure you still exist) and put together a new HD video master.
And even if the negative was gone forever (which it is not) there are prints of the films preserved with the library of congress. So good quality prints exist that they could create a new hd video master from as well.
This needs to be clarified; each and every piece of original 35mm negative film in the Lucasfilm archive has been digitized. The original Trilogy’s camera negatives may have been altered to conform to the (so-called) ‘special edition’ cuts, but the unaltered theatrical cuts themselves are in perfect, pristine, and anamorphic condition in a Lucasfilm hard drive somewhere on Skywalker Ranch… if you want proof, watch the ‘Empire of Dreams’ DVD documentary, contained therein is perfect, pristine, and anamorphic footage of the 1977 film’s original theatrical version, minus the ‘Episode IV: A New Hope’ title on the opening crawl.
George “it’s good enough” Lucas had a plan to eventually release all versions of the films (plus all related archive material) across multiple formats over several decades… the reason being to cover the enormous overhead costs of running Lucasfilm and all it’s subsidiaries and departments, he could have released the original Trilogy’s theatrical versions at any time in perfect, pristine, and anamorphic presentations but deliberately chose not to to heighten demand and eventually roll them out at some future time to no-doubt-massive publicity and bountiful sales.
All of the above comes from a Lucasfilm employee and you can take it to the bank…
The Phantom Menace made over 100M world wide in its 3D release as I recall, on a very small investment for the conversion. Considering that several films come out ever single weekend that never make 100M… I’d say 100M for a 13 year old movie that “nobody likes” is a hell of a good accomplishment. Revenge of the Sith, in particular would have put up strong numbers. Plus there is the added benefit of being able to release of those 3D converted films for the growing 3D home video market.
Not a fan of 3D. If it is a newer movie and scenes are shot with the intention of making them 3D that would make sense, but I hate it when 3D is applied to movies that were not intended to be 3D. And there’s no reason they can’t re-release the original trilogy in theaters before the new Episode VII.
Or you could just stay at home with your eyeballs.
“rebooting the franchise”
and IV V and VI are the only ones I was interested in seeing again… ever. I guess I will take my twins to see VII at midnight in 2016 (no way it is out by 2015).
oops! I forgot: “rebooting the franchise” why that phrase? it is not a reboot… or is it (cue dramatic chipmunk).
and as far as VII goes: no EU garbage. No timothy zahn, no thrawn, no han and leia’s twins, no mara jade…
All of you proclaiming the death of 3D clearly have not been doing business in Asia. They are ravenous for 3D content and way ahead of the US in setting up an infrastructure for 3D.
It may wane here briefly, but the tide will rise in the coming years led by Asia.