Star Wars fans may not know what they’re going to eat for dinner tonight, but a lot of them already know where they’ll be come February 19, 2027. The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm previously confirmed that George Lucas’ original movie would return to theaters for a grand re-release ahead of the 50th anniversary of Star Wars‘ original debut. Naturally, the return of Star Wars to the big screen is something that has a lot of fans on notice in any form, but once it was confirmed that it would actually be the original version of the movie and not the one with a slew of changes, alterations, and extra scenes previously not found in the film, it became a proper event for next year.
Now, Lucasfilm has confirmed news that makes the Star Wars re-release of 2027 even more worthy of a fast track for the hype train. Not only has Lucasfilm confirmed that next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter will be released in IMAX formats when it debuts in May (the Shawn Levy-directed movie was filmed for an IMAX release), but the original Star Wars will also be presented in IMAX for the first time ever and will actually be screened in “a select number of IMAX 70mm film locations” in addition to the traditional theatrical re-release.
It seems inconceivable that Star Wars had never been given a proper IMAX release at any point in time, but it’s worth noting that when the movie was first released, that format wasn’t exactly being used for feature-length films in any form. 70mm prints for Star Wars were previously struck for the film, as widescreen formats of this size were still common in the ’70s, but the upcoming re-release will mark the first time that Lucas’ iconic movie has actually been screened in the IMAX format.
The first movie in the Star Wars franchise to actually be released in IMAX was 2002’s Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, which had to make edits to be released in the format, but no film in the series was actually filmed for IMAX specifically until Disney got involved and produced 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Since then, every Star Wars movie has either been partially shot for IMAX, with all of them screened that way.
The rise of the IMAX format as one of the must-see ways to watch movies in the modern era has become a cornerstone for modern blockbusters, so much so that it created something of a war between Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday when the next chapter of Denis Villeneuve’s saga claimed exclusivity for the format. To that end, it seems likely that the success of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX, on top of the format becoming a near mandate for movie-going, may have spurred the decision to screen Star Wars this way. The trench run scene will no doubt be a sight on a screen that size.
