After years of hope and anticipation, Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition was formally approved for a ground-up, 4K UHD high-definition remaster last summer — and now we know when we’ll all finally to see the results of this long-awaited project!
Just in time for this year’s First Contact Day celebration — and on the eve of the Star Trek: Mission Chicago convention — the newly-remastered, ultra-high-definition of Robert Wise’s Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is beaming down to Paramount+ on April 5, as an exclusive release on the streaming platform.
The news was announced at StarTrek.com this morning by way of a new trailer showcasing the restored and remastered version of the film — including new looks at visual effects and the from-the-negative new color and picture quality of the film.
While Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition will only be available through Paramount+ at the time of its debut, the studio has already announced both theatrical screenings and an on-disc release for later in the year.
Fathom Events will be holding theatrical screenings of the new TMP-DE release on May 22, May 23, and May 25 (local timings and ticket sales coming to Fathom’s website here on April 8), and the film will be coming to physical media in September per the StarTrek.com announcement.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of The Director’s Edition is set to include HDR-10 and Dolby Vision, as well as Dolby Atmos audio — plus new bonus content (details not yet announced) and other features carried over from past releases of the film.
It also appears we will get to see at least one new deleted scene in the forthcoming Blu-ray edition, as producer David C. Fein shared on StarTrek.com today:
For fans of the film, Fein also has another big surprise he revealed during the interview. “There’s a deleted scene that we wanted to have back 20 years ago,” he said. “This was Ilia and Scotty and Decker in engineering. We found some of the footage 20 years ago, but there was no audio, so there was really no point in showing the scene.
But it’s three or four scenes that people have wanted to see forever. So we re-transferred that footage… and we found out that Bob looped the dialogue for the scene. Now that scene’s going to be included in the physical media release and others, because he looped a few. And we found other key scenes that are just fantastic.”
As soon as there’s more news on the Blu-ray release, you’ll find it here at TrekCore!
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