Monday, The Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Foxannouncedbringing all six Star Wars movies in their high-definition digital form to Apple’s iTunes Store, Google’s Play Store and other services, including Amazon’s Instant Video and Microsoft’s Xbox Video.
Having been available for pre-order on iTunes at $19.99 each, all six movies became available for download across platforms today, April 10.
The six-movie saga is comprised of the “Star Wars,” “Return of the Jedi,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith” films and includes new bonus extras and can be bought or all at once as part of the “Star Wars Digital Movie Collection”.
There’s a total of nine hours of bonus footage to explore across all six films. You can buy thecomplete bundle at a discountor grab the movies separately for $19.99 each:
Or, check out the full collection on iTunes.
Either way — choose carefully, young Padawan!
In addition to a curated collection of classic Star Wars extras from each film, never-before-seen specials come in the form of the new “Discoveries From Inside” and “Conversations” between Star Wars artists who helped director George Lucas bring his iconic universe to life.
Rentals will not be offered for the time being and prices will vary depending on the retailer. Amazon fans can save $29.95 bypre-ordering “Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection” for $89.99 via the Amazon Instant Video service.
Separately, Amazon prices them at the same $19.99 as on iTunes. For those wondering, Google’s Play Store matches Amazon’s asking price for the entire collection.
And if you buy the whole collection on Xbox Video, you’ll get an imaginary R2-D2 character to accompany your Xbox Live avatar, a pinball table for the freemium Pinball FX 2 and access to an Xbox-only featurette.
Regardless of your preferred store, owning the movies digitally comes with an added perk of being able to synchronize your purchases with Disney Movies Everywhere, which lets you synchronize and download your digital copies from other service like Amazon and Google’s Play Store, at no additional cost.
With one exception: due to distribution rights, “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” won’t be available on Disney Anywhere because 20th Century Fox, not Disney, owns the rights to that episode.
Star Wars die-hards, beware: these are Special Edition‘Han shot second’versions, not the originals. Unfortunately, there’s no word when, if ever, Lucasfilm might release the original theatrical 1970’s versions in digital, without the added CGI, special effects, scenes and non-sensical changes.
Apparently, Lucas destroyed the original negatives during the restoration process, or at least that was the official word from Lucasfilm when they handed over the franchise to Disney.
If you have pre-ordered any of the movies above, iTunes will ping you via email when they’re ready to download. If iTunes doesn’t start downloading them automatically, choose Check for Available Downloads under the Store menu in iTunes for Windows or PC.
The movies, along with bonus content in the form of iTunes Extras, can be consumed across Mac and Windows PCs in iTunes, on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad through the stock Videos app and on the $69 Apple TV set-top box.
Keep in mind that iTunes Extras requires a minimum of iOS 8, Apple TV 6.2 or iTunes 11.3 on OS X 10.9.3 or Windows 7.
Here’s what the movies include in terms of digital bonus offerings:
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (20th Century Fox)
Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi
Disney-owned Lucasfilm will be kicking off a majorStar Wars fan conventionrunning from April 16 through April 19 in Anaheim, California.
Eight months from now, the first Disney-produced Star Wars movie, “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens”, will hit the silver screen on December 18, marking the first new Star Wars movie in a decade.
