Fans of the original Star Wars trilogy, and we’re talking the original trio of films that avoided the trigger happy editing hand of George Lucas, rejoice! Director John Landis has confirmed that Disney is finally prepared to release the theatrical cuts of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on Blu-ray.
It’s an announcement that ardent fans of Lucas’ space opera have been waiting for, with many losing hope that such a re-release would ever come to pass. But low and behold, 2015 is very much that year of Star Wars – what with both The Force Awakens and DICE’s licensed title, Star Wars Battlefront, on the horizon – and it seems the House of Mouse has finally made that long-awaited u-turn.
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Landis casually dropped the Star Wars nugget while in attendance at the Halloween Horror Nights Q&A, and the director’s comments relating to a galaxy far, far away were later confirmed via Empire.
At a Q&A tonight John Landis dropped that Disney are finally going to re-release the theatrical cuts of the original Star Wars trilogy.
— Empire Magazine (@empiremagazine) September 19, 2015
According to Landis, the decision to re-release the theatrical cuts was given the go-ahead by Lucas, who had long held a firm grip over the original editions, instead layering over unnecessary CGI onto the latter releases of the original trilogy such as 2008’s Star Wars box set. Now, Disney is ready to open the vault and unleash the pure, untouched version of each of the three sci-fi classics, though no official timeline was revealed for their release.
In all likelihood, the House of Mouse will debut the original Star Wars trilogy in the lead in to J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, which is primed to take over theaters come December 18 in North America.