Will we still be waiting for Star Wars score expansions at the 50th anniversary?

[Andy 6,866]

There may be a new hope.  According to SW Rare Vintage Photos on Facebook , restoration work on the unaltered trilogy has leaked. 
 

[Xander Harris 8,878]

I thought I was the only one who still called it The Net.

[Luke Skywalker 2,289]

It's mindblowing we may get the 20-ish bond expansions and they cannot release the complete 9 star wars films. Well six. Because it was a great idea to record the sequels in the US. If williams was not conducting.. they should have recorded in London and have williams in video-conference.

[The Score Cleaner 9,214]

1 hour ago, Luke Skywalker said:

It's mindblowing we may get the 20-ish bond expansions and they cannot release the complete 9 star wars films. Well six. Because it was a great idea to record the sequels in the US. If williams was not conducting.. they should have recorded in London and have williams in video-conference.

[Xander Harris 8,878]

They should have recorded them in Canada

[Tallguy 6,584]

@Andy are you torturing me twice or did someone copy this to a new thread?

[Edmilson 11,393]

1 hour ago, Little Ghost said:

[Andy 6,866]

14 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

@Andy are you torturing me twice or did someone copy this to a new thread?

It may be nothing, but then again…

[Tallguy 6,584]

6 minutes ago, Andy said:

It may be nothing, but then again…

 

Garbled communications. YOU take the ship.

[crumbs 15,853]

4 hours ago, Poor_Man_S_HirschFeld said:

I think his quote was: 

"Audio is not Star Wars' problem"

 

I believe LFL digitised all music masters in their archive as part of the 2018 Demaster project. The only issue is we don't know exactly what sources were located and used, nor which ones are still missing. We can deduce the missing album sessions for ROTJ are still lost because the 2018 used a second-generation album master (presumably meaning they had no original sources).

 

The only small hint we got was a shot of an editing timeline which showed the 3-track 35mm mag was used for Throne Room on the 2018 ANH. That's the same element mostly used to assemble the ANH SE. This was due to the 24-track multitrack tapes missing all the correct film and album takes (as they were physically cut out of the first-generation tapes, like Superman).

 

Supposedly John Neal's estate had the offcuts and LFL borrowed them to digitise years ago, but who knows for sure...

[Tom 6,261]

19 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

@Andy are you torturing me twice or did someone copy this to a new thread?

Jay used a new autofill function. It is now copied into all existing threads.  

[Holko 11,836]

5 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

I believe LFL digitised all music masters in their archive as part of the 2018 Demaster project. The only issue is we don't know exactly what sources were located and used, nor which ones are still missing. We can deduce the missing album sessions for ROTJ are still lost because the 2018 used a second-generation album master (presumably meaning they had no original sources).

 

The only small hint we got was a shot of an editing timeline which showed the 3-track 35mm mag was used for Throne Room on the 2018 ANH. That's the same element mostly used to assemble the ANH SE. This was due to the 24-track multitrack tapes missing all the correct film and album takes (as they were physically cut out of the first-generation tapes, like Superman).

 

Supposedly John Neal's estate had the offcuts and LFL borrowed them to digitise years ago, but who knows for sure...

Though as we can clearly hear, the demasters weren't exactly done with the highest possible competency, so for all we know they could've just picked the album master and 3-track because they're easier to mix (similar to our friends at a certain small label). After all, these are the people who couldn't even downmix fucking LCR to stereo.

[Trope 1,360]

10 hours ago, Andy said:

There may be a new hope.  According to SW Rare Vintage Photos on Facebook , restoration work on the unaltered trilogy has leaked. 
 

Wow, if this is real, then I am very excited! 

[Jurassic Shark 15,892]

Translated: Disney found another way to milk the Star Wars IP for money. But I don't mind!

[Maurizio 6,700]

12 hours ago, Xander Harris said:

There are politics going on behind the scenes when it comes to SW. I can only assume that JW is partially to blame.

 

Wrong assumption. "JW preventing new releases of [insert title]" is just a myth perpetrated by fans, including several here, based mostly on the fact he nixed a few proposed titles in the past. In the case of Star Wars it's other factors and people that got in the way and none of them have to do with Williams' team.

 

11 hours ago, Luke Skywalker said:

It's mindblowing we may get the 20-ish bond expansions and they cannot release the complete 9 star wars films. Well six. Because it was a great idea to record the sequels in the US. If williams was not conducting.. they should have recorded in London and have williams in video-conference.

 

Given the crazy production schedule of these films, it was almost impossible to have the score recorded with the LSO. I think they tried for The Force Awakens, but soon it was clear that it couldn't be made given the amount of rewrites needed and the staggered recording sessions to accomodate JW's process, so it had to be LA.

 

Anyway, it's safe to assume that any potential future release of the sequel scores won't be impeded by AFM reuse fees.

[crumbs 15,853]

They definitely planned to record with the LSO early in the process, as their musicians had been given dates to keep available for sessions in 2015.

 

The plan probably changed once they realised JJ's process wouldn't allow a "conventional" recording schedule, or perhaps John's health issues instigated it.

 

I forget the exact date LA musicians started being contacted for availability but it was before the LSO were notified of the change.

[Tallguy 6,584]

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Translated: Disney found another way to milk the Star Wars IP for money. But I don't mind!

 

Translated: Disney is finally milking the Star Wars IP for money in the most obvious way that we always expected. 

 

(Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it.)

[Mr. Hooper 7,578]

3 hours ago, Maurizio said:

In the case of Star Wars it's other factors and people that got in the way

You can't just say that and not explain. Tell us more. 

[Richard P 5,060]

Yea, but when someone says that, you know it's something they can't talk about

 

Thing is, when proper expansions eventually happen, we may never know the BTS mechanics of why they hadn't happened before, and perhaps the reason is just boring legal or personnel stuff. But with scores as prominent as these, the questions and pondering are inevitable.

[Xander Harris 8,878]

It’s better to be cryptic and ambiguous. Adds to the magic and the mystery.

[aj_vader 712]

4 hours ago, Richard P said:

Yea, but when someone says that, you know it's something they can't talk about

 

Thing is, when proper expansions eventually happen, we may never know the BTS mechanics of why they hadn't happened before, and perhaps the reason is just boring legal or personnel stuff. But with scores as prominent as these, the questions and pondering are inevitable.

It's John 

[enderdrag64 1,744]

11 hours ago, Holko said:

Though as we can clearly hear, the demasters weren't exactly done with the highest possible competency, so for all we know they could've just picked the album master and 3-track because they're easier to mix (similar to our friends at a certain small label). After all, these are the people who couldn't even downmix fucking LCR to stereo.

The 16/24-tracks include the correct film mixes as 3 of the channels, these were used for the alternate Binary Sunset on the 1997 set

[Jay 44,711]

Yes but the performance edits were made by physically cutting the actual first gen multitrack masters, so they had a few reels of the performance-edited cues for the movie, and then other reels of the "leftovers" - the sections of chosen takes that weren't part of the final performance edit, the full takes that weren't used at all in the performance edit, and the takes of the one cue that wasn't used in the film at all (the original binary sunset).  It's those "leftovers" reels that were found and used to make the alt binary sunset for the 1997 2-cd set; the reels of the good performance edits were sent to John Neal to make his album with, then never seen again IIRC.

[BrotherSound 2,648]

8 hours ago, Maurizio said:

Wrong assumption. "JW preventing new releases of [insert title]" is just a myth perpetrated by fans, including several here, based mostly on the fact he nixed a few proposed titles in the past. In the case of Star Wars it's other factors and people that got in the way and none of them have to do with Williams' team.

Exactly: if anything, in recent years it seems JW and his camp have been driving the release of several projects. I know they instigated the expanded release of Dracula and the recent John Williams Anthology box sets.
 

JW clearly wants a say in how his legacy is presented, and Star Wars is a huge part of that, so I can’t imagine the idea of new editions of the Star Wars scores hasn’t at least come up.

[The Score Cleaner 9,214]

7 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

You can't just say that and not explain. Tell us more. 

It's Didier Deautcsh!

[Tom 6,261]

11 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Translated: Disney found another way to milk the Star Wars IP for money. But I don't mind!

I would rather watch Star Wars get milked than watch an alien get milked in Star Wars.  

[Jurassic Shark 15,892]

2 minutes ago, Tom said:

I would rather watch Star Wars get milked than watch an alien get milked in Star Wars.  

 

Now you can have both!

[enderdrag64 1,744]

2 hours ago, Jay said:

Yes but the performance edits were made by physically cutting the actual first gen multitrack masters, so they had a few reels of the performance-edited cues for the movie, and then other reels of the "leftovers" - the sections of chosen takes that weren't part of the final performance edit, the full takes that weren't used at all in the performance edit, and the takes of the one cue that wasn't used in the film at all (the original binary sunset).  It's those "leftovers" reels that were found and used to make the alt binary sunset for the 1997 2-cd set; the reels of the good performance edits were sent to John Neal to make his album with, then never seen again IIRC.

I know, I'm just saying that in 2018 when the 16-tracks were available the 16-tracks would have been no easier to mix than the 35mm since they both contain the film mix

[Mr. Hooper 7,578]

46 minutes ago, Little Ghost said:

It's Didier Deautcsh!

 

 

[The Score Cleaner 9,214]

 

[crumbs 15,853]

10 hours ago, Jay said:

It's those "leftovers" reels that were found and used to make the alt binary sunset for the 1997 2-cd set; the reels of the good performance edits were sent to John Neal to make his album with, then never seen again IIRC.

 

They were definitely seen again, according to Lukas Kendall:

 

Quote

I was at a Star Wars-related convention in L.A. maybe 6-8 years ago where Dan Melson had a booth trying to sell these tapes he got from the John Neal estate—he's been trying to unload them for years. He has every right to own and sell the master tapes, even though he does not own the intellectual property recorded ONTO the tapes. He always asked a fortune and, not surprisingly, people were not interested, seeing as how the tapes are worthless except for the "cool factor." He had a lot of rock stuff too. Of the film music, the tapes are basically dub-downs of little importance except for the Star Wars 2" 16-track masters which contain the edited "selects" Williams and Ken Wannberg chose—I remember when they did the Star Wars Special Edition CDs, they had the 16-track masters, but all of these master takes from the original album had been snipped out! So that's where they went, making those 16-tracks are highly important. Now, the good news: at that Star Wars con was Matthew Wood, a sound editor for Lucasfilm (voice of General Grievous, I think?) and he and I were like, WTF?! I am quite sure he subsequently coordinated to have the 16-tracks digitized at Lucasfilm (in exchange for a tour or something for Melson)...whatever. I think it's all OK, so people should RELAX.

 

This post was made on FSM but, thanks to their recent update, no longer exists. Fortunately @phbart quoted it fully on JWFan!

 

Now granted the timeline is 15 years ago, long before Disney purchased LFL. Hopefully the tapes were indeed digitised (in high resolution) for preservation, although it's strange they weren't used in 2018. More concerning is where the tapes are now; whether Melson still has them, whether they were sold to a private collector, or whether LFL/Disney ultimately acquired them.

 

There must be some dubious legalities involved because I'm not sure how John Neal's estate could bequeath these tapes to a third party when they were never his property to begin with. But at least there's a trail they can follow up, unlike the missing ROTJ album session tapes (which could be anywhere).

[Jay 44,711]

Ah yes, I forgot that's what was found that way! Thanks for that!

[Bayesian 1,575]

On 14/10/2025 at 2:07 PM, Andy said:

There may be a new hope.  According to SW Rare Vintage Photos on Facebook , restoration work on the unaltered trilogy has leaked. 
 

I think the time has come for cautious optimism about a 50th anniversary special-edition-to-end-all-special editions special C&C edition of the SW score--if not the whole OT--in 2027.

 

The 50th anniversary is simply too important a milestone to pass up for an IP as culturally important to the planet and to Hollywood moviemaking as Star Wars. Disney certainly knows this and won't pass up a moneymaking opportunity like this, which won't ever come around again. And because Sony and Disney have been so egregious about their old-wine-in-new-bottles approach to repackaging and selling us the same soundtracks over and over, there is zero chance that people won't raise a huge stink if the new soundtrack releases are anything short of a top-to-bottom redo project, working from first principles, with Matessino in charge.

 

That kind of effort will take time and resources and I have no doubt people are working on it now, just as people are apparently working on restoring ANH to its original glory, as we can see above. They're just working under very strict NDAs, is my guess.

 

May 2027 is 19 1/2 months away. That's not an awfully long way off, especially if you're feeling time slip by ever more quickly, as I have been lately. In this day and age, there seems to be a conspicuous general shortage of things to look forward to. For me, as well as likely millions of others, SW 50th anniversary is going to be one of the truly special things to look forward to.

 

[The Score Cleaner 9,214]

4 minutes ago, Bayesian said:

That kind of effort will take time and resources and I have no doubt people are working on it now

Soo. would you say...

 

 

[Holko 11,836]

I could definitely see it as part of Disney trying anything to scrounge up any bit of the goodwill they spent the last 10, well  mostly last 6 years actively pissing away.

[FBC Director 10,557]

Disney will probably forget.

[1977 1,979]

36 minutes ago, Lady Dimitrescu said:

Disney will probably not give a shit.

 

[crumbs 15,853]

2 hours ago, Bayesian said:

I think the time has come for cautious optimism about a 50th anniversary special-edition-to-end-all-special editions special C&C edition of the SW score--if not the whole OT--in 2027.

 

I really want to believe the 50th anniversary might finally be the spark that gets this project going, but it feels like we've been here before with so many other milestones since Disney bought LFL.

 

We all thought Episode VII would trigger new releases... nothing.

 

The 40th anniversary and Episode VIII... nothing.

 

Sony losing the music licence and reverting to Disney Music, with Disney digitizing all the music elements... nothing but OST reissues.

 

The sequel trilogy finally completed by JW... nothing.

 

Even Solo and Rogue One were expanded... still nothing.

[Tom Guernsey 3,480]

Perversely, Star Wars falling massively out of fashion and public interest would probably significantly increase the chances of them being released as it would just become another licensing job without as many interested parties. It feels like that might have been the guess when the Anthology came out. Also feel like if George hadn't sold to Disney, there'd probably be a clearer path to them being released too. Still, if there's one thing we know is that Disney always do a good job of restoring their ageing IP... oh... wait.

[FBC Director 10,557]

25 minutes ago, 1977 said:

 

 

Yeah

[crumbs 15,853]

42 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Perversely, Star Wars falling massively out of fashion and public interest would probably significantly increase the chances of them being released as it would just become another licensing job without as many interested parties. It feels like that might have been the guess when the Anthology came out. Also feel like if George hadn't sold to Disney, there'd probably be a clearer path to them being released too. Still, if there's one thing we know is that Disney always do a good job of restoring their ageing IP... oh... wait.

 

I'm pretty confident we would've had Indy expansions by now if LFL had never been sold to Disney (with Paramount being so friendly with the labels).

 

But on the flipside, we probably wouldn't have gotten a 5th Indy score...

[Jurassic Shark 15,892]

20 minutes ago, crumbs said:

I'm pretty confident we would've had Indy expansions by now

 

We already got that. Twice.

[Tom Guernsey 3,480]

1 hour ago, crumbs said:

 

I'm pretty confident we would've had Indy expansions by now if LFL had never been sold to Disney (with Paramount being so friendly with the labels).

 

But on the flipside, we probably wouldn't have gotten a 5th Indy score...

I would be inclined to agree on that one. Perhaps the failure of DOD and Harrison Ford's age, perhaps they will just leave that one be... then again, it's Disney, knowing when to call it a day on some IP isn't their strong suit. Probably a marginally higher chance of expanded Indy scores over Star Wars though.

 

52 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

We already got that. Twice.

I mean, technically yes, but they aren't fully expanded and don't have any bonus tracks etc.

[Richard P 5,060]

8 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

I would be inclined to agree on that one. Perhaps the failure of DOD and Harrison Ford's age, perhaps they will just leave that one be... then again, it's Disney, knowing when to call it a day on some IP isn't their strong suit.

 

The frustrating thing with Indy and SW is that in the real world there's no reason at all for them to worry about interest waning on an IP. If they let a label do it, it's the label's problem to worry about the (obviously non-existent) issue of demand. It feels like this would all be a lot simpler if the big studios didn't have this big hang-up on wanting to milk tentpole IPs themselves.

 

When it comes to the OT, I fully sympathise with a musically illiterate executive - we have expanded scores, with only pretty nerdy things wrong with those sets.

 

Less sympathy with the PT - it's hard to see what technical challenges exist for these scores over and above any general big project. We're repeatedly seeing deluxe 3-disc sets with multiple alternates, demos and the like. Aside from tsunami-level fan expectation, why would these be unusually difficult?

[j39m 86]

52 minutes ago, Richard P said:

Aside from tsunami-level fan expectation, why would these be unusually difficult?

I get your point, but this sentence makes me sad. Star Wars really is one of those franchises where even a JWFan veteran (despite best efforts I'm sure) would run the risk of taking the ship straight into a fandom blowback iceberg — let alone a "musically illiterate" executive.

 

I'd love to see an experiment run here prescribing a base budget (or however this works, basically a forcing function for trade-offs) and seeing what people would choose to execute for a hypothetical SW mega-expansion. I would bet on solid discord across most dimensions.

[FBC Director 10,557]

1 hour ago, j39m said:

I get your point, but this sentence makes me sad. Star Wars really is one of those franchises where even a JWFan veteran (despite best efforts I'm sure) would run the risk of taking the ship straight into a fandom blowback iceberg — let alone a "musically illiterate" executive.

 

I'd love to see an experiment run here prescribing a base budget (or however this works, basically a forcing function for trade-offs) and seeing what people would choose to execute for a hypothetical SW mega-expansion. I would bet on solid discord across most dimensions.

 

Uh wat

[GerateWohl 6,361]

Remember just how awfully the one or two petitions asking for Star Wars expansions failed with, I think, each being stuck by just 300 votes or so.

Probably the market for that isn't really as big as we think it is.

[Tallguy 6,584]

The scariest part for me (on a very low bar of scary) is that when new fans see the OT they say crap like "Oh. George really DID fix it. This looks awful." As if 90% of the movie isn't the same. Particularly most of the sets.

 

Bleh.

[Mr. Hooper 7,578]

9 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Probably the market for that isn't really as big as we think it is.

 

8 hours ago, Bayesian said:

...there is zero chance that people won't raise a huge stink if the new soundtrack releases are anything short of a top-to-bottom redo project...

 

"If hundreds of aficionados raise a stink on internet forums and no Disney executives are there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

[kingtolkien 51]

I really hope that Mike Matessino is reading this thread and is secretly happy because he is preparing expanded scores for all 9 star wars films and we will all be very very pleasantly surprised.