PHE Press Release: Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Fully Restored Director's Edition (4k UHD) (Paramount+ Streaming) (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Fully Restored Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture Makes Its Long-Awaited Debut

The Definitive Vision of Director Robert Wise Debuts Exclusively on Paramount+
April 5, 2022, in Celebration of First Contact Day

Film Arrives on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™ in September with Extensive New Bonus Content



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LOS ANGELES, Calif. – March 24, 2022 – Eagerly anticipated by Star Trek fans for over two decades, Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition will make its long-awaited debut exclusively on Paramount+ on April 5, 2022, in celebration of First Contact Day. The film will be available to stream on Paramount+ in 4K Ultra HD on supported devices and platforms. The newly restored film will subsequently arrive on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in September from Paramount Home Entertainment. In addition, fans will have the opportunity to see the restored version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition on the big screen for the first time when Fathom Events and Paramount Pictures bring it to theaters for an exclusive two-day event on May 22 and May 25. Tickets will go on sale Friday, April 8 at FathomEvents.com.

Originally released in 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture became the fourth highest grossing movie of the year and earned three Academy Award® nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, and Best Music, Original Score. The film successfully launched the Star Trek franchise beyond the original television series, despite having been rushed to theaters with incomplete special effects and forced editing choices.

In 2001, director Robert Wise revisited the film to refine the edit and enhance the visual effects. His updated vision was released on DVD in standard definition and embraced by fans but has never been available in higher definition until now. Meticulously assembled and restored by producer David C. Fein with preservationist Mike Matessino, both of whom originally collaborated with Wise, the film has been prepared for presentation in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision™ high dynamic range (HDR) and a new powerful and immersive Dolby Atmos® soundtrack.* Fein and Matessino assembled a team of special effects experts, led by returning visual effects supervisor Daren Dochterman, and utilized the extensive resources in the Paramount Archives to recreate the effects not just in HD, but in Ultra HD. After more than six months of painstaking work, the updated movie looks and sounds better than ever while staying true to Wise’s original intention.

“I couldn’t be prouder and more thrilled to have completed the film in 4K,” said Fein. “Paramount offered unprecedented access to the original elements and exceptional support and the results are stunning. Utilizing the latest discoveries and innovations of modern film production, The Director’s Edition delivers so much more today than was previously possible. It’s an adventure you’ll never forget!”

Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition Synopsis

The U.S.S. Enterprise boldly debuted on the big screen with the cast of the original Star Trek series, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan. Meticulously restored and remastered, with enhanced visual effects and state-of-the-art sound, this definitive vision of director Robert Wise has been optimized for a new generation of fans. When an unidentified alien intruder destroys three powerful Klingon cruisers, Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) returns to the helm of a newly transformed U.S.S. Enterprise to take command and confront an alien spacecraft of enormous power heading toward Earth.

The Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition 4K Ultra HD Disc and Digital releases will include HDR-10 and Dolby Vision,™ as well as Dolby Atmos®, accompanied by extensive new and legacy bonus content, which will be detailed at a later date.

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[Todd Erwin]

Rather sad that Roku devices and TVs lost 4K HDR support on Paramount+ back in December.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Rather sad that Roku devices and TVs lost 4K HDR support on Paramount+ back in December.

Tell me about it, the built in app on my Vizio doesn't even output 5.1 on top of that. At least it works on my Shield when their app isn't crashing every 20 minutes.

 

[Capt D McMars]

Rather sad that Roku devices and TVs lost 4K HDR support on Paramount+ back in December.

Whaaaaaaa?

 

[BobO'Link]

OK... a Fathom event! I just might have to look into that one when tickets go on sale...

 

[Dick]

How did they pull this off? Insider information up until now has suggested that the "added" footage of the DVD director's cut had not been produced in HD and was nearly impossible to bring up to that level, and now we get 4K? Awesome, for sure, but I hope there is an extensive featurette on this disc that shows how the restoration was achieved. After TWWOTBG restoration, this is proving out to be quite a stellar year for upgrades.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

How did they pull this off? Insider information up until now has suggested that the "added" footage of the DVD director's cut had not been produced in HD and was nearly impossible to bring up to that level, and now we get 4K? Awesome, for sure, but I hope there is an extensive featurette on this disc that shows how the restoration was achieved. After TWWOTBG restoration, this is proving out to be quite a stellar year for upgrades.

This has been in the works for the past year or so.

 

[JoshZ]

How did they pull this off? Insider information up until now has suggested that the "added" footage of the DVD director's cut had not been produced in HD and was nearly impossible to bring up to that level, and now we get 4K? Awesome, for sure, but I hope there is an extensive featurette on this disc that shows how the restoration was achieved. After TWWOTBG restoration, this is proving out to be quite a stellar year for upgrades.

The CGI effects that were created in SD resolution the first time around have been redone.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

When I was a kid in the early 80's, I recorded the movie onto a pair of audio cassette tapes from our TV and listened to them over and over. We never had a VCR. Random noises of my mom coughing and washing dishes provided additional foley. How far we've come since then.

Pity the trailer isn't in 4K on YouTube.

 

[DarkVader]

When I was a kid in the early 80's, I recorded the movie onto a pair of audio cassette tapes from our TV and listened to them over and over. We never had a VCR. Random noises of my mom coughing and washing dishes provided additional foley. How far we've come since then.

Pity the trailer isn't in 4K on YouTube.

Cool story - you made the best with what you had - that way of thinking will take you a long way. I'm looking forward to seeing this in 4K.

 

[Wayne_j]

Paramount+ chipped in the money to redo the special effects. This is kind of like what let the Snyder cut of Justice League happen.

 

[Todd Erwin]

When I was a kid in the early 80's, I recorded the movie onto a pair of audio cassette tapes from our TV and listened to them over and over. We never had a VCR. Random noises of my mom coughing and washing dishes provided additional foley. How far we've come since then.

Pity the trailer isn't in 4K on YouTube.

I was lucky, since the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia broadcasted on VHF channel 6, and the audio could be picked up on most FM radio dials at the 87.7 MHz frequency, allowing me to record (in mono) from FM radio directly to audio cassette.

 

[TravisR]

I was lucky, since the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia broadcasted on VHF channel 6, and the audio could be picked up on most FM radio dials at the 87.7 MHz frequency, allowing me to record (in mono) from FM radio directly to audio cassette.

6ABC kept that up through at least the mid-2000's as I remember a friend who would listen to Lost on the radio while she was at work. She said it worked well until there was an episode featuring Jin and Sun who would generally only speak Korean.

 

[JamesSmith]

Well, now that's done. What big restoration projects are worthy of Mr. Matessino's attention now? What big films need to come out?
--jthree

 

[Lord Dalek]

Well, now that's done. What big restoration projects are worthy of Mr. Matessino's attention now? What big films need to come out?
--jthree

Well considering his day job, a Star Wars trilogy soundtrack release that doesn't somehow suck.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I post these press releases not only here on HTF but on several Facebook groups dealing with 4k discs.

I was sort of surprised that I got a lot of negative feedback about this release and the fact that Paramount continues to milk the Star Trek franchise -and- that this Special Restoration should have been included in the recent Star Trek 4k set.

I don't think I need to explain this to anyone here. Yes, Paramount milks the living shit out of Star Trek. I am amazed at how many times the films were released over and over on DVD and Blu-ray as singles and then in collections.

However, this release was for the fans. It has been something that we have all been wanting and waiting many years for, as request after request was made to Paramount to invest the money and give this film the facelift it deserved.

I was completely shocked that the money was spent to do this restoration in the first place.

So, to address the second complaint I heard on FB today, I can absolutely see why this was not included in the recent 4k set of titles. Paramount needs to recoup their expenses and they knew that fans would make the additional purchase for this restored Director's cut.

I'm very excited. Star Trek: TMP was never my favorite film but I really liked the extra scenes when I saw them first presented. Over the years I have grown more appreciative of this film and I think that this is going to be an entirely new viewing experience with the upgraded special effects and 4k resolution. Really looking forward to watching this.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Total selfishness: I do hope they also release this as a standard Blu-ray since I don't have 4K capability yet.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Total selfishness: I do hope they also release this as a standard Blu-ray since I don't have 4K capability yet.

I would say chances are excellent. I just did an Amazon search on Paramount 4k releases to refresh my memory and it looks like most all of them (if not all of them) include a Blu-ray disc. Of course, I am certain someone is going to find an exception to that.

 

[Todd Erwin]

Tell me about it, the built in app on my Vizio doesn't even output 5.1 on top of that. At least it works on my Shield when their app isn't crashing every 20 minutes.

Whaaaaaaa?

So, back in December, around the time most Roku owners finally received the Roku OS v10.5 update (that was announced in September), the 4K HDR content on Paramount+ when using the Paramount+ app for Roku would only stream that content in SDR (I'm assuming 1080p at best), since the HDR or Dolby Vision flag no longer appeared on customer's TVs when streaming episodes of Picard or Discovery as well as movies like A Quiet Place. Customers began contacting both Paramount+ and Roku to report the issue in as early as December 4, yet Paramount+ tech support took 2 months to acknowledge there was an issue, instead providing customers with often ridiculous troubleshooting steps they believed would resolve the issue (making sure the Roku device or display was connected to the 2.4 GHz band, making sure both the device and app were up to date, making sure Volume Mode was turned off, making sure bandwidth saver was turned off, and my personal favorite - try changing your resolution settings on the Roku to 720p). When customers reported back that those steps did not work, P+ referred customers to Roku. Of course, Roku then referred them back to P+, since "channel partners are responsible for maintaining their own channel on our platform." After two months, Paramount+ support began telling affected customers that the issue would be resolved with the next Roku OS update (at the time, P+ was saying v10.6, now v11) being released "this Spring." Roku has admitted that a "future update" will resolve the issue, but has flip-flopped on whether they were referring to an app update or an OS update.

Roku did announce a new OS update this week, v11, and that it would be rolling out to all supported devices "in the coming weeks." If you are a long-time Roku customer, then you know that when Roku says weeks, they really mean months. If we arewaiting on an OS update to fix the issue, most of us will likely see it available 1-2 months from now, meaning this issue took up to 6 months to fix.

Oh, BTW, I am still receiving that same troubleshooting e-mail from "Tier 2" tech support at P+ telling me to reduce the display setting on my Roku to 720p about every two weeks.

 

[Todd Erwin]

I would say chances are excellent. I just did an Amazon search on Paramount 4k releases to refresh my memory and it looks like most all of them (if not all of them) include a Blu-ray disc. Of course, I am certain someone is going to find an exception to that.

Indiana Jones, Almost Famous, The Untouchables, Raiders of the Lost Ark to name a few are 4K/digital only releases (no Blu-ray).