By Rogue One: A Star Wars Story topped the box office for the second week in a row, and it will likely have good legs for a third week. While doing press for the film, director Gareth Edwards revealed that there’s a 4K restoration of the original Star Wars.
Star Wars is, of course, the sequel to a bunch of movies made after it, including Rogue One. The following comes from an interview with Little White Lies.
Little White Lies: When you went back and watched the original films did you take copious notes?
Gareth Edwards: On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John Knoll, our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope – it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times. So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought – shit, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.
In case you’ve never seen it, check out the clueless original trailer for Star Wars below.
It’s unclear which version of Star Wars has been restored, though it may be the original theatrical cut of the film rather than the various Special Editions with new footage and special effects from George Lucas. Twentieth Century Fox retained the distribution rights to the original Star Wars in perpetuity even after Disney acquired Lucasfilm; Twentieth Century Fox also has distribution rights for the rest of the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy until 2020.
Star Wars turns 40 years old in 2017, so this may suggest some kind of special theatrical re-release of the film or some sort of home video re-release to come. It is my understanding that Star Wars things tend to make a lot of money.
Maybe John Williams will finally see Star Wars.
On the note of all things Star Wars, the staff at Flixist sends its best wishes Carrie Fisher, who suffered a serious heart attack while on a flight last Friday. She is currently in stable condition, according to her family.
May the Force be with you, Carrie.
[Little White Lies via The Playlist]