Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[Brightstar]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

yes. And the UOT will still be unreleased!
(and we will be at around 5000-6000 pages in this thread wondering when it will be released.)

one day it will happen and it will be a day long rememberd

[NYorker]

I think it's safe to say there will be another BD release...probably with audio commentary of Jar Jar Binks just to make it "special"

[Brightstar]

Are they gonna stop at EP IX or are they gonna make more ?

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by Brightstar

Are they gonna stop at EP IX or are they gonna make more ?

As far as the main (numbered) installments go, Episode IX is the last one planned at the time, as far as we know. There's also the spin-off movies though, and I could see them continue making those for a long time. There's three of them coming that we know of and the third one will be released after IX.

[Bickle76]

The first spin off will be Episode XXIV.

[Bickle76]

The previous post is pure conjecture.

[CinemaBlu]

Originally Posted by Brightstar

Are they gonna stop at EP IX or are they gonna make more ?

Of course there will be more. They'll probably takes breaks between trilogies (not counting spinoffs) but they'll continue making them as long as there's money to be made.

[Mavrick]

There's going to be a film a year for the next 6 or so years at least I think. main entry this year followed by the first spin off the year after then the next main entry so on so forth.

I wonder if Star Wars will burn out at that rate of films a year.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

What the "it's a little sliver of fandom who cares" folks underestimate is what made Star Wars great to begin with. It's cross-cultural appeal.

I'm not suggesting that only 'a little sliver of fandom' care about the various changes to the OT over the years.

I'm suggesting the segment of the fandom that really, really cares about a Blu-ray release of the UOT is dwarfed by that portion of the fandom that doesn't really care all that much about a Blu-ray release of the UOT.

Most Star Wars fans don't care all that much about Blu-ray period. And many of those who do care about Blu-ray have already bought the saga on Blu-ray.

Would some of those people double-dip should a UOT release ever materialize? Of course. I would be one of them. But many more would not double-dip. Even accounting for people who are new to Blu-ray or the (relatively few) who have been holding out specifically for a BD release of the UOT the market for that release is a portion of a portion of a portion of the fan base.

Could I be underestimating how large some of those portions are? Sure.

But I don't think I am.

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

In order to do that, it had to have wide appeal.

Yes, Star Wars had wide appeal. I think we're all in agreement on that.

In fact, some of us have been around from the beginning and experienced these various cultural phenomena first hand.

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

And I think many, many of those folks would pick up a package this holiday season that said "STAR WARS - THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY - RESTORED JUST AS YOU REMEMBER!", it's just a no-brainer.

How many of the people in your informal 'conference room' survey even own a Blu-ray player?

I'm not being glib, that's a serious question.

I think you're right about the trailer. I think it has amped up both excitement about the new movie and nostalgia for the old movies to a degree I didn't expect (and certainly not this early).

But I don't see that excitement translating into a significantly larger market for a Blu-ray release of the UOT.

Which is what we're talking about here.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by FilmFreakosaurus

Try telling that to Hollywood nowadays.

They think MORE is MORE!!!!

And why do they think that? They think that because people buy tickets and show up for more. And it's not just "nowadays" - anyone who thinks that Hollywood hasn't always done reboots, franchises, sequels, series, etc., doesn't know anything about film history.

You're a film studio executive. Your decision risks $200 million of the studio's money. You have a choice of going with a fantasy film with characters you've never heard of or "Batman". Which do you think you're going to go with?

As I've posted a number of times before, first Hollywood made silent movies of classic novels. There were silent versions of "Frankenstein" and "The Wizard of Oz", for example. Then they made sound versions of the silents. Think we didn't have "more" before? We had Lassie, the Marx Brothers, Tarzan, Andy Hardy, the Crosby-Hope road pictures, Charlie Chan, the East Side Kids (and offshoots), The Thin Man, Hopalong Cassidy, Boston Blackie, Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, Sherlock Holmes, the Golddiggers films, Abbott & Costello, all of the Universal monster movies and sequels, etc.

In the 1960s, we had all the Hammer horror film Frankenstein and Dracula remakes along with the AIP Roger Corman produced Edgar Allan Poe films, most of which had been made before, at least in name. We also had James Bond. And that's aside from all of the serials of the 1930s and 40s, most of which have been forgotten and/or lost as well as the shorts from The Three Stooges made from the 30's to the 60's and cartoons from WB and MGM, among others. Wasn't Bugs Bunny the very definition of a franchise? And let's not forget that Batman first appeared in a 1943 serial.

What matters is not that we see some of the same characters and venues. What matters is whether the new stories that are told are indeed new and interesting. It could be worse. They could have tried to reboot the original Star Wars. Someday they probably will, but I'll be dead by then anyway.

[Chiyo_chichi]

Originally Posted by octagon

I'm not suggesting that only 'a little sliver of fandom' care about the various changes to the OT over the years.

I'm suggesting the segment of the fandom that really, really cares about a Blu-ray release of the UOT is dwarfed by that portion of the fandom that doesn't really care all that much about a Blu-ray release of the UOT.

Most Star Wars fans don't care all that much about Blu-ray period. And many of those who do care about Blu-ray have already bought the saga on Blu-ray.

Would some of those people double-dip should a UOT release ever materialize? Of course. I would be one of them. But many more would not double-dip. Even accounting for people who are new to Blu-ray or the (relatively few) who have been holding out specifically for a BD release of the UOT the market for that release is a portion of a portion of a portion of the fan base.

Could I be underestimating how large some of those portions are? Sure.

But I don't think I am.



Yes, Star Wars had wide appeal. I think we're all in agreement on that.

In fact, some of us have been around from the beginning and experienced these various cultural phenomena first hand.



How many of the people in your informal 'conference room' survey even own a Blu-ray player?

I'm not being glib, that's a serious question.

I think you're right about the trailer. I think it has amped up both excitement about the new movie and nostalgia for the old movies to a degree I didn't expect (and certainly not this early).

But I don't see that excitement translating into a significantly larger market for a Blu-ray release of the UOT.

Which is what we're talking about here.

Bluray has been around for nearly a decade now. The PS3 alone has sold 70 million + in North America. No need to go into how bad SW fans want the UOT. I wonder how many pages of this thread have a comment about it. The market is there!

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Brightstar

Are they gonna stop at EP IX or are they gonna make more ?

They will make them as long as they are massively profitable. And Disney thinks they will be massively profitable for a long time, otherwise they wouldn't have paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm ($2 billion in cash, $2 billion in stock).

They currently have planned Episode VII for December 2015, the first stand-alone Star Wars film for December 2016 and Episode VIII for May, 2017.

I suspect we'll see another stand-alone Star Wars film (unless the first one bombs) in December 2018 and IX in May 2019. I think eventually they'll make sure they have at least one Star Wars film of either type in each year. That's almost a guarantee of worldwide revenue of a $ billion. Studios don't like uneven revenue from year-to-year as it negatively impacts the stock price.

The bigger question is whether Lucasfilm can develop another franchise or whether they can successfully bring Indiana Jones back from the dead. (Or maybe they'll reboot "Howard the Duck" with Donald Duck in the lead role.)

If audiences dwindle, they'll stop for a few years and then bring them back when audience interest grows again, although Star Wars is about more than the movies - it's about the potential for new Disney rides (I wouldn't be surprised if Disney creates a new theme park totally devoted to Star Wars) as well as merchandise. If they can create new characters that kids care about, the merchandise licenses can be enormous.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Chiyo_chichi

Bluray has been around for nearly a decade now. The PS3 alone has sold 70 million + in North America. No need to go into how bad SW fans want the UOT. I wonder how many pages of this thread have a comment about it. The market is there!

Actually, I don't think it is. Do the fanboys want it? Sure. But how many of them are there really? And DVD and Blu-ray sales are in decline. If one is not a fanboy and they've already bought Star Wars on DVD or Blu-ray, I would say most would not dip again just to get the unaltered OT. You can't judge how many people care by a site like this one. Most people really don't give a crap either way and don't really care about the differences that people here obsess over.

Now if VII turns out to be a great (or at least popular) film and they create a deluxe edition that includes VII as well as the unaltered OT, I suspect that will sell pretty well. Other than that, I'm not so sure.

Five to ten years from now, when 4K TVs have decent penetration in the home and assuming there's a 4K physical format, a new boxed set of all the films (could be as many as 16 by 2025) remastered in (at least) 4K, including the unaltered OT could also be a big seller, assuming that physical media still exists 10 years from now.

[Angel Eyes]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Actually, I don't think it is. Do the fanboys want it? Sure. But how many of them are there really? .

At last count I think about, ten of us..yup ten of us.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Angel Eyes

At last count I think about, ten of us..yup ten of us.

That reminds me of the interview between some idiot news reporter and Bob Dylan back in the 1960s when the reporter asked Dylan how many other folksingers were there like him. Dylan looked him straight in the eye and deadpanned, "167" (or something like that).

[Scarface32]

Mark Hamill panel up next

Star Wars Celebration Anaheim Live Stream, Powered by Verizon - Day 3 - YouTube

[BillieCassin]

Originally Posted by octagon

Would some of those people double-dip should a UOT release ever materialize? Of course. I would be one of them. But many more would not double-dip. Even accounting for people who are new to Blu-ray or the (relatively few) who have been holding out specifically for a BD release of the UOT the market for that release is a portion of a portion of a portion of the fan base.

Could I be underestimating how large some of those portions are? Sure.

But I don't think I am.

I think it's about those folks who haven't dipped at all, honestly.

What I think folks see happening now is the general public is just getting the message that Star Wars is back. In the last four months, the official first teaser got about 65M views. Very impressive. The new trailer, just three days old? It's already past 33M, not to mention the "reaction" videos and various permutations of it - some of which have millions of views on their own.

Millions of people who haven't gone to see a Star Wars movie in a theater since at least 1997, if not 1983, are just figuring out that Han Solo and Chewbacca are back in the Millennium Falcon. People in their 30's and 40's who hadn't considered themselves a "Star Wars fan" since their childhoods. People that, while they may stream up a storm, haven't abandoned physical product - I know folks who have cut the cord, but I don't know anyone that doesn't still have the ability to play a DVD if not Blu-ray.

Blu-ray penetration is still not where I think we wish it should be, but it is widening now into "Joe Six-pack's" house, either because of gaming systems or simply replacing DVD players. There really isn't a significant price difference at this point, and when people figure out what HDMI is all about (just one cable? like USB?) they are replacing them with Blu-ray players.

What isn't happening is those folks rushing out to now buy Blu-ray software. To many folks, a DVD in a Blu-ray player is a revelation on it's own - most people have been watching DVD's via RCA cables on their new HDTV's - just watching an upscaled DVD over an HDMI connection looks like a whole new world to them.

But...give them a "must own" perfect Christmas gift like the original trilogy in a new box that says "just like you remember them"? Dropped in November, in the furtive rush toward the release of Episode VII? Printing cash. And at the same time they throw a salve at the fan base who does want the UOT - win win win for everyone. Include Empire of Dreams and you even have those that prefer the SE's in on it. I'm sure it would also be on DVD, but since this thing would market itself, and with Blu-ray players as cheap as they are, it just might sell some of those, too.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Actually, I don't think it is. Do the fanboys want it? Sure. But how many of them are there really? And DVD and Blu-ray sales are in decline. If one is not a fanboy and they've already bought Star Wars on DVD or Blu-ray, I would say most would not dip again just to get the unaltered OT. You can't judge how many people care by a site like this one. Most people really don't give a crap either way and don't really care about the differences that people here obsess over.

Dude, disc media is dropping in sales slowly over time but if you don't think a new Star Wars set would sell a ton of copies for Disney I don't know what to tell ya.

[solaris72]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Dude, disc media is dropping in sales slowly over time but if you don't think a new Star Wars set would sell a ton of copies for Disney I don't know what to tell ya.

Yeah- I know plenty of people who don't care about physical media who'd nevertheless pick this up in a heartbeat.

[BluLobsta]

Oh, man! Down to $41.94! I'm crushed, physically crushed