Whenever a new home entertainment format comes along, the first question many film fans ask is, ‘When Star Wars coming out on it?’ And with George Lucas always waiting until these things take off before he launches his creation onto it, we inevitably have to wait awhile.
However IGN is reporting that at Star Wars Celebration V, Lucas made the announcement that all six Star Wars film will be available on Blu-ray during autumn 2011, promising “the highest picture and audio quality, along with extensive extras like documentaries, vintage behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, retrospectives and never-before-seen footage from the Lucasfilm archives.
The Star Wars creator also premiered one of the ‘lost’ deleted scenes from the original trilogy, which will be part of the release, showing off a scene from Return Of The Jedi, which shows Luke Skywalker assembling his new, green-bladed lightsaber prior to infiltrating Jabba the Hutts palace, and placing it in R2-D2’s dome (you can actually see a bootleg of the scenes as AICN).
As for whether we’ll get the original versions of the original trilogy, don’t hold your breath, as Lucas says “Releasing the originals 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. Its a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.” Well, that’s his excuse and he’s sticking to it, although don’t be shocked if in a few years he decides he wants a few million more in the kitty, and decides to bring them out. But he sure loves his Special Editions, so those are the ones we’re getting first.
No specific release date was announced, but at least you know you can start saving your pennies for Star Wars on Blu-ray during autumn of 2011.