Another day, another Star Wars rumor. This time, however, the rumor comes from a semi reliable (?) source. Renowned director — and father of Max — John Landis visited Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, on Friday and took part in a Q&A to kick off Halloween Horror Nights. This year, the event brought back the popular maze inspired by his film An American Werewolf In London. During the back-and-forth, Landis dropped a bit of information that will probably get those tongues a waggin’.
According to Empire Magazine’s Twitter account, George Lucas told John Landis that the original theatrical cut of Star Wars is being re-released, finally:
At a Q&A tonight John Landis dropped that Disney are finally going to re-release the theatrical cuts of the original Star Wars trilogy.
— Empire Magazine (@empiremagazine) September 19, 2015
The quote in question — thanks to Collider — has Landis calling out George Lucas for hurting his movies before, ever-so-subtly, dropping a rumor about the theatrical cuts in question:
“First of all, they wouldn’t let me. George owns his movies, so he can do what he wants … My personal opinion is George hurt his movies by doing what he did. However, George said to me, ‘But they’re my movies.’ I thought, ‘That’s fair.’
Did you know Disney, by the way, is putting out the original Star Wars the way it was? So, Disney, they’re like, money on the floor.”
Rumors such as this one are nothing new. Ever since Disney bought Lucasfilm, there has been random rumblings regarding the emergence of these untampered-with classics. What makes this rumor feel a bit more solid, though, is the simple fact that George Lucas and John Landis are pals. That friendship aside, there are other issues at play here.
First and foremost, Fox has full ownership of the original trilogy’s rights through to 2020, and owns the rights to A New Hope until the end of time, as it were. But, with the consistently growing hype for The Force Awakens, and pretty much everything Star Wars-related, fans have been clamoring more and more for some highly coveted merchandise. Right now may just be the perfect time for Fox to strike a deal with Disney and get the right versions of these classics onto Blu-ray and DVD as they were meant to be seen.
(Via Collider and Empire Magazine)
