The entire Star Wars live action movie franchise is returning to cinemas, with a brand new 3D retrofit…
Even if this hadn't been rumoured for many months, you'd still be hard pushed to call it a massive surprise. For Lucasfilm has now formally announced that the entire live action Star Wars saga is getting a 3D retrofit, and will be released once again in cinemas.
The statement from the firm said that "There are few movies that lend themselves more perfectly to 3D; from the Death Star trench run to the Tatooine Podrace, the 'Star Wars Saga' has always delivered an entertainment experience that is completely immersive."
It makes you wonder how we suffered them in 2D all this time.
Industrial Light & Magic is handling the conversion work, and the first fruits of it will be with a cinema re-release of The Phantom Menace, which is expected to happen in 2012. Presumably, Lucasfilm will then work through the movies in episodic order, and subsequently prepare them for a 3D Blu-ray release once it's done with them all. However, word is that the films will be rolled out a year at a time, so you might have a bit of a wait to buy another boxset of the films.
We're certainly not going to scoff at the idea of getting the Star Wars movies back on the biggest screens possible, which is arguably where they belong. But we remain pretty much unsold on live action 3D, and genuinely hope that George Lucas and his team can pull something out of the bag to convince us otherwise.
We'll keep you posted once we get firmer release dates for the films.