We probably all knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but Lucasfilm says it's going to remaster the entire Star Wars saga in 3-D and release the movies in theaters (again). You can expect Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace to kick things off in 2012, which also happens to be the year of the Mayan apocalypse. Hm...
Depending on your view of 3-D, this is either a great moment in the history of Lucasfilm or a horrifying moment in the history of Lucasfilm. Deadline has the details:
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. Though never a fan of 3D, 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.