I'm sure this has been covered but I didn't see it. Is there any word on whether the Disney buyout will effect Fantasy Flights rights to publish EotE? Or is there any word from FF about whether they'll be able to/willing to release material focusing on the upcoming trilogy?

Doubt it affects any agreement already in place. As to whether there will be anything done concerning the new trilogy or one-shot movies, only time will tell. Even if they were to do something they probably couldn't say anything about it until much closer to the release of the first movie in 2015. Lucas takes his NDAs very seriously and I'm sure that would carry over to Disney.

mouthymerc said:

From what I've seen from a few folks I follow on Twitter, Disney took its NDAs pretty serious before the buyout. Heck, most major companies take their NDAs seriously.

But you're right on both counts, that the buyout won't have any affect on FFG's current contract (and quite likely the Disney purchase was well in the works by the time FFG negotiated their contract), and that any effects really won't be seen or felt until 2015.

Yeah, my thought is that this contract with Fantasy Flight was part of Lucasfilm's "new wave" of product development and merchandising. At first, I was very surprised that Fantasy Flight was focused on the Original Trilogy. In hindsight, I now see that they have been shifting away from focusing solely on the Prequels and brining the Classics out to build excitement for the originals which (I know this is obvious) will lead into the new movies. I think that releasing all six films in 3D was originally part of the plan, but they either ran out of time or into technical issues.

herozeromes said:

Could also be that they were using the reception of the 3D version of The Phantom Menace as a gauge to see if it was worth going ahead with doing theatrical releases of the rest of the movies. In hindsight, I don't think using the most commonly panned movie of the franchise as a measuring stick for fan response was a great idea. Hell, there's quite a few suggested viewing orders that suggest Episode 1 be dropped entirely as it adds almost nothing to the overall trilogy that's not at least touched upon in the other prequels.

Episode II will be screened in 3D on Star Wars Celebration II Europe in July - so its not all over, yet (for good or bad). The night after I read that I had a nightmare they would redo the original trilogy as a TV-series (shudder), which was trumped the following morning by reading that the Green Lantern script writer is trying to get to write the Blade Runner sequel …

Both episode 2 and 3 are scheduled for release this fall. Seems silly to put out the bad movies in 3D but not the good ones. Then again 3D is a silly concept anyway.

Personally I hope they don't 3Dize the OT. Doubt I would go see them. I prefer them in all their already updated format. I do hope the re-releasevthe original trilogy on BlueRay with the original film cuts like they did on dvd.

It's probably a lot easier to make the Prequels in 3D than to remake the originals. The originals were filmed in 2D, and trying add that extra dimension always loks like garbage. The prequels are basically Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with CGI 'toons and scenery. There's a good chance they still have all the sets sitting around on hard drives (even if not, they could just use the ones from the LEGO Star Wars games. The storytelling there was about as good). Probably not too hard to add a virtual camera for all those bits. The interesting thing will be that all the toons would be three-dimensional figures, while the actual human actors would be the flat, two-dimensional characters. Actually, that fits pretty well.

I seem to recall that the prequels were all filmed in such a way, using digital camera technology, that it would make it easier for them to be redone in 3D.

Like the Grand Falloon said, the original trilogy was filmed the old-fashioned way, so they'd have to do forced perspective to make it 3D, and a lot of folks find that method to really not produce that noticeable an effect, In my case, the forced perspective method of 3D simply leaves me with a splitting headache.

mouthymerc said:

This is what I said when I first heard about the buy-out. I'm not as anti-Disney as some, I don't think they can do worse than Lucas has for the past couple decades, but I they want to get the rest of the haters onboard, all they need to do is re-release the Blu-Rays with Han shooting first, Old Anakins ghost and (for the love of the gods) without that obnoxious CGI furry alien in the Jabbas palace scene (wouldn't complain if they dropped Vader screaming, "NOOOO" as well).

Nyarlathotep5150 said:

It's funny, but that's the one thing that kept me from buying the Blu-Rays. I could deal with all the other unneccessary garbage changes, but not that simple addition to one of the most powerful scenes in the OT.