By Nikki Finke | Tuesday September 28, 2010 (*at*) 7:51pm PDT
UPDATE: This is big news and Lucafilm intends to make a big announcement about this long-awaited live-action Star Wars Saga conversion to stereoscopic 3D tomorrow. Can you imagine the Death Star trench run and the Tatooine Podraces in that format? Yikes! Plus, with Industrial Light & Magic supervising the project, led by John Knoll, this won't just just another cheezy 3D conversion. According to tomorrow's announcement, obtained by Deadline, ILM's visual effects supervisor Knoll says, "Getting good results on a stereo conversion is a matter of taking the time and getting it right. It takes a critical and artistic eye along with an incredible attention to detail to be successful. It is not something that you can rush if you want to expect good results. For Star Wars we will take our time, applying everything we know both aesthetically and technically to bring audiences a fantastic new Star Wars experience." Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace is expected to be released theatrically in 2012. A release date has not yet been set for the other five films in the saga. This is sure to be a cash cow for everyone involved. Star Wars creator George Lucas acknowledged publicly earlier this year that the 3D conversion had been stalled but that seeing first Avatar and then Alice In Wonderland become such successes gave him new impetus to make the conversion. Lucas has said he'd been looking "for years and years and years" to add 3D to the Star Wars Saga but felt the technology hadn't measured up until Avatar changed his mind.
I hardly ever say "OMG", but OMG!!!!!! I heard this on the radio and I screamed outloud this morning! We can take our little people in our lives to the Star Wars movies, and they'll get to experience them on the BIG screen in 3D!!! I can hardly contain myself! See......it don't take money, it don't take fame, we don't need no credit cards...... Oh wait- Wrong movie!
How about just making a new Star Wars movie in 3D rather than doing a 3D retread. Next it'll be retro Star Wars in black and white.
It kills me that Lucas continually fiddles with these movies, and is now going to re-release them in 3d, but we still can't get the original, theatrical version of Star Wars in a top of the line format from Lucasfilm. >:(
I'd like to get excited about the 3D thing but because of eye problems (near sighted in one eye, far sighted in the other and a stigmatism to boot) I can only watch 3D for about 10 minutes before I get a headache. Also, this just sounds like another attempt to squeeze more money out of the SW cash cow.