This year marks the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Robert Wise’s big-budget theatrical outing that launched the crew of Captain Kirk’s Enterprise from a television cast to the stars of their own movie franchise — and it wasn’t until 2001 that the director had a chance to truly complete his vision of the film.

Released on DVD, Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition was a hit with fans, trimming down overly-long scenes and enhancing unsatisfactory visual effects with then-state-of-the-art digital updates…. but in the 18 year since The Director’s Edition arrived, fans have been hoping to see that version of the movie upgraded to a high-definition release.

To date, The Director’s Edition has only been available in standard definition — the 2009 Blu-ray release of The Motion Picture is the older theatrical cut of the film — and due to the required cost of redoing the DE’s visual effects for today’s ultra-high-resolution screens, it’s been a bit of a long shot to think we’d ever see a return to that version of the film.

Until now, that is: announced yesterday at the “Inglorious Treksperts” panel at San Diego Comic Con, Director’s Edition producer David Fein shared the news that official talks with Paramount is in discussions with the DE team to bring the long-awaited 2001 cut of The Motion Picture to an all-new 4K Ultra HD presentation.

DE visual effects supervisor Daren Dochterman, who was also on hand at the event, shared his excitement on Twitter:

Now, just to be clear: talks are not guarantees — while it’s definitely a positive sign that Paramount was okay with this sort of news being shared publicly, we all know how long things with Star Trek films can take, if they happen at all. (Still waiting for the 4K Blu-ray release of the remastered Wrath of Khan from 2016, guys!)

That being said, we can all be happy to hear that the studio is even considering taking another pass at The Motion Picture, something long overdue from a company that seems to revel in repeated re-releases — like the “Anniversary Edition” of The Motion Picture we’ve started to see scheduled for a September 2019 release, a repackaging we expect to have no new content on the included disc.

UPDATE: Our friends over at TrekMovie spoke with Dochterman after yesterday’s SDCC panel, and gleaned some additional information from the producer about the status of things:

The team returning to work on the project also includes Mike Matessino, who was the Restoration Supervisor. Dochterman said they also hope to bring in additional members of the team who worked on the original DVD project. “We want to get as many of the original people as possible because they know their stuff and know what they did,” said Dochterman.

According to Dochterman, the team is currently “figuring out the details” on how to move forward, and Paramount “is interested and wants it to happen.” Work has yet to start, but one thing that will be of big help is that the original team have kept all the assets from their work on the Director’s Edition DVD.

A timeline has yet to be worked out. Dochterman thinks it is possible that their work on the project could be completed this year if work started soon, however, he does not expect everything can be completed in time to allow for a Blu-ray release this year.

We’ll keep you posted on whatever news we learn about this project — and in the meantime, keep those fingers crossed that we’ll get this long-awaited release come to reality.

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