Last month, Lucas also announced that the entire saga would be released on Blu-ray disc in a great new collector’s item including upgraded sound and picture quality, deleted scenes and special features. 

 

The 3D re-releases will kick off with Episode I, The Phantom Menace, being released in early 2012. Afterwards the films would be released annually at roughly the same time of year as the last, depending on how well they do of course.

 

Lucas is reportedly overseeing the 3D conversion process himself, making sure that each film looks as perfect as possible. The process takes roughly a year to complete and Lucasfilm will be employing several high-end 3D conversion houses to work on the project.

 

The 3D versions of the films have been rumoured for some time, but it seems Lucas wanted to wait until a sufficient number of 3D enabled movie theatres were operating before plunging into the project. At present, 2 000 – 2 500 3D enabled theatres are available in the US, with 500 new ones being added every month.

 

The decision to re-release the movies in 3D apparently came after Lucas saw the Avatar movie, convincing him that Star Wars was also ready for the 3D treatment.

 

Let's just hope that Lucasfilm can pull of decent 3D effects instead of ruining the classic movies. This will technically be a re-re-release of the original trilogy which dates back to the late 1970's, as these movies already featured in the 1997 'special edition' re-release. Seems the world just can't get enough Star Wars. We're definitely not complaining.