Ever since Disney picked up Lucasfilm, fans have been hoping for an unedited ‘Star Wars’ trilogy on Blu-ray and they finally might have a reason to be excited. According to two independent and apparently reliable sources, Disney is planning to do just that! The rumored plan is that they want to put out the original cut of ‘A New Hope’, ‘Empire Strikes Back’, and ‘Return of the Jedi’ out on Blu-ray. Not the redone special editions but the actual originals folks! However, there are just a couple items popping up that are getting in the way.

The first of which is that there has been some damage to the original negatives that they have which the studio has to work around. With the originals having been released on laser-disc at one point they may have a solution there, assuming it isn’t one of the scenes that weren’t perfectly copied to that format. That isn’t the real issue that is holding things up though.

While the sources say they want to have the trilogy released on Blu-ray before ‘Star Wars Episode VII‘ is out in theaters, there is a huge issue that wasn’t brought up. That issue is that Fox owns the distribution rights to ‘A New Hope’ in perpetuity in all media formats. For the other five films that were released they own the theatrical, nontheatrical, and home video rights throughout the world until May of 2020. Unless ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ has been pushed back to late 2020 and Disney has worked out a distribution for the original ‘Star Wars A New Hope’ there wouldn’t be of a chance of that happening.

While it is always possible that Disney and Fox have worked out a deal for distributing the film,s it seems unlikely that Fox wouldn’t just be cutting a new release on their own prior to the ‘Star Wars Episode VII’ release. That seems a lot more feasible to see happening and wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it was an announcement that we heard in the near future. While I would love to be telling you I fully believe this rumor, with the rights of the film up in the air belonging to another studio, I just can’t do that.

Do you think Disney and Fox may have secretly worked out a deal to make this happen? Do you think that Fox will announce their own release of the films prior to ‘Star Wars Episode VII’? Share your thoughts below!

Source: io9