Disney acquires Star Wars original theatrical versions rights from Fox

[Shark_Blade]

So Disney acquired 21st Century Fox recently.

Sure, Marvel gets X-Men & Fantastic 4 in their MCU. But the most interesting thing to me is this Star Wars related news:

Disney gets to complete its two major geek culture franchises, by adding the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties to its Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as gaining possession of the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, before the digitally remastered versions of were put out by George Lucas.

YES!!! No more stupid added on CGI alien singing at Jabba Palace, no awkward out-of-place crowd and spaceship flying at the end, no weirdly out of place Young Anakin soul/ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi to name a few.



Just pure original theatrical release! Finally, gimme the Bluray already! All praise & thanks to God Almighty.

Waiting for the news on the blurays - development, sales. They might even release it on theatres like they did Phantom Menace 3D! Exciting!

[TheBlueTurtle1]

Not sure how I feel. At the end of the day Spider-man homecoming sucked so bad, and the Tom Holland is by far the worst Peter Parker/Spider-man.

Fox X-men movies suck, but they did SOME good casting, Such as Wolveine/Hugh Jackman and Beast/Kelsey Grammer.

I don't see Marvel doing any better.

I also hate the Idea of Disney owning The Simpsons. I wonder what that means for the Simpsons park in Universal studios???? Are they going to move it in to the Disney Parks now?

[Shark_Blade]

Originally Posted by TheBlueTurtle1

Not sure how I feel. At the end of the day Spider-man homecoming sucked so bad, and the Tom Holland is by far the worst Peter Parker/Spider-man.

Sure Homecoming is not perfect but we might at least agree it's better than Spiderman 3 & Amazing Spiderman 2. And Holland is better than Tobey imo.

Fox X-men movies suck, but they did SOME good casting, Such as Wolveine/Hugh Jackman and Beast/Kelsey Grammer.

Disagree. Only X-3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine sucks imo. Apocalypse is almost as bad but the cast made it work.

I don't see Marvel doing any better.

what do you mean? Their Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and recently Thor Ragnarok are great. And have you seen Marvel's tv shows on Netflix? Daredevil, The Punisher, Jessica Jones to name a few... Simply amazing. Superb!

I also hate the Idea of Disney owning The Simpsons. I wonder what that means for the Simpsons park in Universal studios???? Are they going to move it in to the Disney Parks now?

Most probably. Disney wants to own everything lol!


Anyway, back to Star Wars pure untainted version!

[TheBlueTurtle1]

Sh*t. Disney now owns Buffy.

I actually hate the MCU, so boring!

[plastroncafe]

So we can expect a limited release of the unknown doctored original trilogy, before it's thrown in the Disney Vault?

Maybe I can actually retire my VHS copies now.

[Spike Spiegel]

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

So we can expect a limited release of the unknown doctored original trilogy, before it's thrown in the Disney Vault?

Maybe I can actually retire my VHS copies now.

The "despecialized edition" fan edits have been enough for me, and noticing the little differences is a fascinating experience. You can find them easily enough with Google-fu. Those practical effects deserve to be seen by more people.

To be honest, the whole "Han shot First!" movement seems a bit overblown to me, and epitomizes the generational "fandom ownership" problem that is often discussed here and elsewhere. There are good and bad things about the various Special Editions. I'm a millennial whose first introduction to SW was the gold boxed VHS tapes of the 1997 SEs, watched with my mom over the course of a magical Christmas weekend when I was in first grade.

All the versions should be available for archival purposes, imo. I personally prefer the SEs before Hayden was added in place of Shaw and Vader's "Noooo..." was put into ROTJ. And I am seriously considering putting a stipulation in my will that the Ewok celebration song gets played at my funeral.

CBS had the right idea with their Star Trek blu-rays. The original '60s effects and the CGI edits can be switched seamlessly. Every generation of fans gets what is most palatable to them.

[NinjaPug]

This is FAKE NEWS. Fox owning the distribution rights to Episode IV isn't the reason we don't have the original versions.

Don't get your hopes up. It's not happening.

[Vegita-San]

Originally Posted by NinjaPug

This is FAKE NEWS. Fox owning the distribution rights to Episode IV isn't the reason we don't have the original versions.

Don't get your hopes up. It's not happening.

If it'll make money, Di$ney will make it happen.

[Spike Spiegel]

If you buy the current (!) DVD boxsets of the first six films, you still get those elusive bonus discs with the laserdisc scans of the OT. This is obviously not the case, however, with the Blu-rays.



Also, I have found two pristine used copies of the limited edition OT DVDs from 2006 for low, low prices over the last few years at different used movie stores. The last set I bought was $3 per movie...$9 plus tax spent for DVDs that people were shelling out huge amounts of money for on eBay and Amazon not too long ago.

[RaphaelinSTL]

Originally Posted by TheBlueTurtle1

I wonder what that means for the Simpsons park in Universal studios???? Are they going to move it in to the Disney Parks now?

That's what I was thinking too ... Universal is sure losing out on a bunch of it's themed attractions now with Marvel and the Simpsons.

I'm shocked they haven't done anything with the TMNT over there at Universal yet.

[Krutch]

Originally Posted by TheBlueTurtle1

Sh*t. Disney now owns Buffy.

I actually hate the MCU, so boring!

Fox hasn't given a single sh*t about Buffy since it stopped airing. I can't believe it still hasnt even hit Bluray yet. And the HD Buffy streaming services out there show how little care they put into the conversion.

If anything, I'd bet Disney will make a sequel series with a new young cast in highschool ignoring the comic books continuity.

[TheBlueTurtle1]

Originally Posted by Krutch

Fox hasn't given a single sh*t about Buffy since it stopped airing. I can't believe it still hasnt even hit Bluray yet. And the HD Buffy streaming services out there show how little care they put into the conversion.

If anything, I'd bet Disney will make a sequel series with a new young cast in highschool ignoring the comic books continuity.

NOOO, PLEASE NOOOOOO

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Shark_Blade

YES!!! No more stupid added on CGI alien singing at Jabba Palace, no awkward out-of-place crowd and spaceship flying at the end, no weirdly out of place Young Anakin soul/ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi to name a few.

Ugh. I doubt they'll even do that. Maybe eventually. Kathleen Kennedy has said they would never touch "George's originals" (1-6), and I don't blame her. If anything, I wish they'd take it a step further and reedit them even more thoroughly. Definitely no interest in seeing "Matte Box Wars" again.

They already re-released the original versions of 4-6 on DVD years ago and nobody even cared. Another release isn't going to move the needle and they know it, though they might just do it just to shut up the very loud 1,000 people asking for it over and over again even though they were already given it.

Originally Posted by NinjaPug

This is FAKE NEWS. Fox owning the distribution rights to Episode IV isn't the reason we don't have the original versions.

Don't get your hopes up. It's not happening.

Correct.

[sdp]

FAKE news, Fox was not stopping Disney on releasing anything Star Wars, especially the original cuts which Disney has no interest in because the majority of the people don't give two craps no matter how much the internet tries to imply that everyone wants them.

Disney was going to get the rights for all films except Ep.IV by 2020 anyway and they would've continued to work with Fox for any future releases of IV and now they won't have to but that's about it, it doesn't really change any plans.

[CyberCubed]

Various thoughts:

1. Buffy has been over for a decade. Why would this bother anyone? Because of those bland Dark Horse comics? And now with the actors all being considerably older, outside of the off-chance of an anniversary movie, you'll never see them reprise their roles in a new series anyway.

2. Spiderman Homecoming was a decent movie, and Tom Holland has a lot of potential. If they reduce the Avengers fanboyism in the next one I'll have no problem with him. I don't see what this has to do with anything anyway.

3. The X-men movies future is now interesting. Dark Pheonix is still coming, but after that? Full reboot? Will Hugh Jackman go back on his decision to retire as Wolverine? Will Disney even want Hugh Jackman?

4. All those god awful Avatar movie sequels are now Disney movies. James Cameron is probably kicking his heels together.

5. The Simpsons is now owned by Disney. If the show wasn't nearly in its 30th season, I'd say this would make the series go on another 10 years. I'm really curious now if Disney will allow Simpsons to ever end.

6. Can we get a GOOD Aliens movie sequel now?

7. Planet of the Apes future is in good hands. Hopefully they continue the current movie universe.

[sdp]

I'm saddened by The Simpsons, I think it was likely Fox would bow out after Season 30 but now that Disney has this new property they will try to milk it instead of finally letting it die. For those asking about The Simpsons Universal rides, those have licenses so until they expire Disney can't do anything about it, but I doubt they'd put the Simpsons in one of their Disney branded parks, with all their new properties it's more likely they re-imagine MGM into a Universal Studios type of park for "older" less kid friendly properties.

All those properties that had little chance of revivals or any love on Fox now have 0% of happening. So yeah, as bad as some properties had it now it'll be worse. Revivals like the X-Files ones won't be happening anymore.

Avatar is interesting, I wonder how much meddling they'll have on it and how much Cameron would let them. Clearly Disney was already interested in Avatar since they built Avatar World in their park but they might want to change Cameron's vision, who knows how that will go.

I'm thinking other franchises like Aliens/Apes etc will not be handled by Disney much, but the amount of those films being made will definitely lower, so for Apes it might not affect it since it's successful but Aliens that hasn't been doing so hot chances of new movies will be lower than say if Fox was not owned by Disney. And I mean this with every other mid-card IP, I only used Aliens/Apes as examples.

Worst of all is we'll see less risky / interesting films and more safe stop as well as less output of stuff in theaters, this is crummy now matter how we look at it.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by sdp

Avatar is interesting, I wonder how much meddling they'll have on it and how much Cameron would let them.

Zero. He has total creative control and that wouldn't change. Disney would just now be in charge of the marketing and such.

[CyberCubed]

I don't see why people care about old shows being "revived," especially ones from the 90's. All the actors are 20 years older now.

X-files was a rare exception and even then you know it won't last long. I keep seeing people whine about shows that were over for decades like Buffy or Married with Children or whatever....seriously WTF? What were people expecting for old dead shows?

[sdp]

I don't care much really but it's an example.

It also means less new shows, Disney is not going to greenlight many shows that Fox would've, and yeah maybe 80% of those shows would've been crap but we're losing that 20% of awesome content that Fox might've taken the risk and Disney won't.

For example if Disney normally makes 10 new things a year and Fox makes 10 new things a year, now Disney is going to make 15 new things a year, we're losing "5" new things every year, and you can bet they're going to be the riskier things that we lose and they'll only keep it "safe" to risk less money in their investments.

That doesn't mean the 15 things will be of higher quality or that 5 bad things just won't be released, those 5 things not released will just be projects that could've been huge failures or successes but we'll never know, and the 15 things released now can be blander and safe since there isn't as much to compete with.