It’s been a few months since we last heard any news about the in-development Star Trek: Deep Space Nine retrospective documentary What We Left Behind, but today, producer Ira Steven Behr announced that the film has completed the editing process and is moving on to post-production efforts.
In a video announcement (above), Behr revealed that after several years of filming interviews, digging in to the Deep Space Nine archives, and editing footage, the film has reached “picture lock” status — meaning that editing is complete and the production team is moving to the next phase of final development.
While the biggest stage of the documentary’s assembly is finally over, the team still has plenty of post-production work to do, including sound and music editing, graphic and animation design, bonus features, and many other steps — and of course, licensing and remastering the original episodic footage for a new high-definition presentation.
The official premiere date for What We Left Behind still hasn’t been announced, but the team is promising that the film will be released sometime during DS9’s 25th Anniversary year — and they shared some more information on that front in a new update to backers.
OK, ok, we get it, you’re just as anxious as we are see this finished film and circle the big date in your calendars, but unfortunately we still aren’t quite ready to give any specific time-frames for the premiere events or digital and subsequent physical disc releases.
Why? Because the simple fact is, as an independent film company, we’re dependent on partnership with a larger studio or distributor to provide their resources to get this film out beyond our own loyal fanbase. Many of these scheduling decisions will depend on factors we’re not aware of yet, and we simply don’t want to promise something when all our tribbles aren’t already in a row, so to speak.
What we CAN promise is that we’re doing everything we can to ensure our backers get to celebrate this film with us during the DS9 25th Anniversary. And for those eligible for premiere events, we’ll be giving you plenty of heads-up and input on on scheduling of those events this fall as soon as we have details to share.
As with last summer’s event, the Deep Space Nine documentary team are going to be holding a panel at August’s STLV convention, where they plan to provide even more updates on the status of the film — and showcase some new footage from both the documentary and “the series itself,” possibly meaning a premiere of HD footage.
The TrekCore team will, of course, be on hand to bring you all the latest news from that event when it happens next month — so keep checking back here for updates!