At the beginning of October, the first ten Star Trek feature films exited the Paramount+ streaming service in the USA. Now we know where they are going.
Star Trek Max
Fans looking to binge-watch the Star Trek movie franchise will have to subscribe to the HBO Max streaming service (or the HBO premium cable network). Starting November 1, HBO will have all six TOS-era movies, including the recent Director’s Cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as well as all four TNG-era Star Trek movies.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is headed to HBO Max with the rest of the TOS movies
As of today, Paramount+ offers two Star Trek films: 2009’s Star Trek, and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. 2016’s Star Trek Beyond is currently streaming on AMC+.
The move to HBO is part of a previously agreed licensing deal that predates the 2021 launch of Paramount+. The movies will likely remain on HBO for a few months followed by some or all returning to Paramount+. It was November of 2021 when Paramount Plus+ finally first had the full 13-film library available to stream, but since then, prior licensing deals have resulted in various Trek films exiting, only to return later. The last mass migration happened last summer when the first 10 films moved to AMC+, only to return to Paramount+ in the fall.
Nemesis and the rest of the TNG movies are also coming to HBO Max
It is expected that these kinds of deals will end so that Paramount Global can have better control over its own content. There are a number of licensing agreements that will be expiring in the next few years, including a deal with Epix for recent film releases in 2024 and the mega-deal for South Park on HBO Max that ends in 2025. Just last week, an analysis by The Wrap cited these licensing deals as one of the reasons Paramount Global hasn’t been a serious acquisition target, summarizing “A potential suitor would need to pony up top dollar for a company that isn’t in full control of many of its biggest hits for several years.”
Even in the era of streaming, there is nothing unusual about third party licensing deals; however, Paramount Global (previously CBS and ViacomCBS) has made a major investment into developing exclusive Star Trek content for their own streaming service. Star Trek is often cited as one of the company’s most important franchises, and Paramount+ now touts itself as the exclusive home of the entire Star Trek television franchise after it let licensing deals with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video lapse, with the final deal expiring in July of this year. The service has never promised to be the exclusive home of ALL Star Trek content including the feature films, but it’s likely that will happen (eventually) once they get past all of these prior commitments.
Paramount+ promotion for the Star Trek TV shows
You can always buy and rent
The Star Trek movies are also available digitally for rent or purchase via Amazon, Apple, Google and other digital distributors. If you want to be sure to have access to the Star Trek movies, you can pick them up on DVD, Blu-ray, and even 4K UHD Blu-ray. The 2020 collection of the first 10 movies is available on Blu-ray at Amazon for $45.00. Recently Paramount released a six-movie collection of the TOS films on 4K UHD Blu-ray, available on Amazon for $95.89.
The three Kelvin movies are available on Blu-ray for $12.96 and 4K UHD Blu-ray for $35.19.
Find more news on streaming and home video at TrekMovie.com.
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Well I hope the big P made a super pretty penny over the move.
This is stupid.
Sorry, but it’s 2022, and this is stupid.
Paramount’s actions and their press releases are at odds.
This is stupid.
It is stupid, but this deal (and possibly others) was most likely made before 2022 ;)
Perhaps instead they should try to make less $$ and not create so much new Trek content for us then?
This franchise is obviously not bringing in the types of dollars that Marvel, DC or Star Wars brings in. So if doing this brings in more cash to keep the franchise expanding then we should have no issue with it.
It has to do with contracts signed a while back that they have to now honor. It’s about legalities. Once those preexisting contracts end, the shows will return to Paramount+. That’s explained above.
Totally agreed. Other than Tom Cruise Star Trek is Paramout’s biggest heavy hitter. And they don’t even have Trek’s movies? Like who cares about the Kelvin movies? We want TMO and Wrath of Khan and Voyage home and Undiscovered Country and First Contact. The classics!
Well the Transformers and Kung Fu Panda franchises have brought in a lot more $ than Trek. Sure, they are taking a pause with those right now, but they will be back at some point.
Fair point. But Transformer and Panda are Movie only franchises.
P: Well, I finally built my garage to store all my classic cars in!
H: Can I borrow them?
P: Sure!
*looking around the empty garage.
P: I made a great deal.
Did you get millions per car to loan them out?
lol, yeah, exactly.
“Paramount Plus, your One stop for all things Tre….” Um, never mind.
To all the streamers who don’t own these on Blu-Ray:
’We’re laughing at the superior intellect.”
(-;
Yeah, no kidding. I remember years ago seeing this weird holier-than-thou attitude from people on streaming services held over those who were still buying physical media. I kept thinking, do you guys really think this is the most stable place to plant your flag? The internet, a notoriously fickle medium, combined with the whims of corporate America? Good luck with that.
Exactly. And despite the small market, BR is doing fine still, and there is a reason new 4K BR’s are in high demand and we pay $30+ a pop for them. And their is a solid market for remastering old movies on BR with SHOUT, Eureka and other companies. It’s not going away. The market is not huge, but it’s stable and profitable.
PS: And the secret sauce is that the end result is a superior picture and far superior audio.
I don’t own them on blu ray.
But I own digital copies of every movie. Save for the directors cut of TMP, and I’m okay with that.
You mean they never told you the tale? To amuse Paramount, no?
Never told you how in the year 2022 Paramount sent ten streaming films into exile on a barren sand heap….with only the contents of the Blu-Rays to sustain us.
Haha, nice! Thanks, guys, I needed a good laugh on a Monday.
AWESOME !!!
:-D
Indeed, Sir. Indeed.
Exactly that.
Remember when Disney+ debuted three years ago? They had EVERY MCU, Pixar, Disney classic, and Star Wars movie immediately on their roll-out. And that content never left.
I love the simplicity of finding stuff to watch on Disney+ as well. They have the five main hubs, but it’s also easy to find other categories.
Soooo, rhetorical question: why can’t Paramount+ just look at Disney+ and say “let’s copy Disney+! It’s easy to use, easy to navigate and load content, and keeps all their own IP!”?
Disney doesn’t have total control over all marvel characters, particularly Spider-Man, and hulk.
What about Deadpool and Spiderman?
Deadpool is now on Disney+. I watched both of them last week on it. And Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is actually coming too. Disney cut a deal with Sony to air them but not sure when. Off course we are talking about America specifically. Those have been on Disney+ in other countries from the beginning.
But the Incredible Hulk movie will still be missing.
That’s not at all true.
There were even (and still are) Disney movies that weren’t on the streaming service and people wrote articles about it.
there are a metric ton of disney classic theatrical shorts still not on the platform, and that’s not even counting things that probably never will show up due to problematic stuff (ie: song of the south)
exclusivity narrows the audience… a non trek fan who might love it will never get paramount plus so they can see trek… many fans first find it randomly then fall in love with old shows new shows movies etc… it’s better to have some trek content available for people to randomly find then get pplus to catch more…
Totally agree. Everyone is comparing Disney money to Paramount money and that’s not real. Let Trek circulate and find fans. Most of us never paid for a single episode when we became fans and the first time we shelled out for anything more than a novel, the series was 11 years old!
Plus I really don’t think Paramount Global getting acquired and inevitably hacked up for parts is in any of our best interests either, unless it’s a company that would just swallow it up whole and perhaps leave it be, like Apple. Maybe.
So it’s kinda great if these deals are at the very least causing a stay of execution.
Exactly!
That’s my issue with the classic shows now being exclusively on Paramount+. A year ago you could watch them on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. My guess is new fans found the shows on Netflix or Prime many times over than on Paramount/CBS All Access. Sadly now just being on one site (and a smaller one at that) limits new viewers. But they are all still on Netflix worldwide at least.
But in this issue, no one is upset that they are sharing the films with other sites or channels, it’s also that they are no longer on the site that pretends its all things Star Trek these days either. So there is a difference but yeah they’ll be back. In fact like the shows the Star Trek films were basically shared on multiple sites for years. Now they seem to just be on one place at a time. So they are much less accessible since they showed up on Paramount+.
Disney needs to work harder on the non-Pixar/Marvel/Star Wars assets. No 4K version of The Sound of Music in 2022? Are you kidding me?
1994 Kirk and Picard
2026 Kirk and Picard ?? (which Kirk tho)
Reinvest some of this money back into doing HD upgrades for DS9 and Voyager, since it would appear all the licensing deals for those shows now remain exclusively with P+.
Meanwhile, P+ continues to be a perfectly executed joke.
There’s no return in investment for them to upgrade DS9 and VOY.
Sure there is, and I’ll make the case right now: the novelty of exclusivity to attract subscribers followed by re-licensing all the shows off platform to other streamers or cable channels after a time. The cost of remastering both is two episodes of Discovery.
The master negative not the raw footage is videotape. You are talking about reassembling two shows from scratch. Its a massive undertaking and one that has never been done. It would cost as much as a new show easily, we are talking 14 seasons in 2K. You need to find all the raw dialog, adr and foley. The digital files if they are recoverable for the effects if not then a massive redoing of all of those in cgi. You still need to uprez and re-render them if they can be migrated over. You need the sound effects and soundtrack and using all these elements you have to recreate a new multi track mix. You need to scan each piece of film and reassemble each digital effect and composite.
And you would need computers that can read and understand the old software, not so easy to find!
Yeah, that’s a lot of what they did when they went back and remastered The Next Generation for HD, to say nothing of them 100% recreating the VFX for The Original Series during that remaster. Totally get that the lost CGI complicates things in a different way, but uprezzing those pure VFX sequences via AI could be a workaround. I’m just saying, remastering a Berman era show is not unheard of, and I don’t see the harm in people calling for that to happen.
Fans are getting everything they want by being noisy, and if Trek’s exclusivity on P+ can be bought for a price anyway, then the chance to recoup the outlay to future-proof the entire catalogue seems attainable, even if I don’t think fans need to worry about being accountants here. Everyone poo-pooing the idea because it’s not what Paramount wants to do kinda miss the point that they started a streaming network and didn’t think to or bother with walling off their own IP. Disney bothered to buy back as much as they could — though, admittedly, Paramount/Viacom doesn’t have the same money Disney does. But it just means that their business is messy, and messy is exploitable, and so if we’re Star Trek fans, why not try to put some pressure out there about what we want? I’m already watching Trek on P+ in HD, even enduring the ads they put back into the older episodes. At some point, the service stops being worth my while, which is saying a lot, given how much Star Trek content there is.
You are all referring to the OLD WAY of doing this. The way these will be remastered will be through emerging AI/deep learning software that will upgrade the image digitally, including the SFC. These tools are advancing every year, and within the next few years the software will mature to the commercial grade software stage, and then the eps can then be upgraded to HD with simply a couple staff working on each ep (i.e. low cost) with an upgrade/editing menu.
And this is why they have not proceeded with the expensive old way of doing this like with TNG — because they know this technology/set of tools are going to be available soon.
Agreed! I just recently subscribed to Peacock and it has better shows, movies, and classics. I don’t know why P+ isn’t getting it right.
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’m so OVER streaming, this is why I’d rather own my favourite movies and TV.
I do subscribe to some services sometimes but I still do not like it. I do not like having to cast and using my phone as a remote. I do not like the delayed action controls. Streaming is still a hassle. It’s been years and it just hasn’t improved any. Hell, I just bought a new region free BD player and it STILL doesn’t have streaming services on it besides Netflix. Irritating that these other services make it so difficult to watch on a television. And no, I’m not buying a new TV just for streamers.
Well since I have HBO Max, not a big deal. But they’ll be back on Paramount+ at some point too.
As far as people saying this is proof why physical media is better, sure that’s obviously true, but people are missing the point as well. If you’re reading this, chances are A. You are clearly a huge fan already and B. you do own some if not all them physically.
The point is that these sites are trying to capture new fans to these IPs and give them a one stop shop to get into a brand. It’s for them more so than old fans. And let’s be very honest about it, sure you may have Star Trek because we’re big fans, but few people are going to buy physical media for every film and show out there. It’s too much content these days and majority of people probably watch something once and move on. That’s where streaming is a huge positive. Most people will just watch a show or movie once and never again unless they are huge fans. And even then most will probably not watch it more than once a year.
There is just so much on these days. I’m old enough to remember when TV took mostly a break in the summers and Christmas time. Today you have new episodes of shows airing all 52 weeks out of the year. No one can keep up but because nothing disappears in streaming (in theory ;)) you can just binge things of course. I haven’t seen the new GOT show, I don’t have the time. It’s just too much lol. But will binge it in the future now that it’s over. I will never buy it because I know I will only watch it once like I did the original show. But for hardcore fans I’m guessing they all have the Blu rays.
Oh and love that Paramount+ promotion banner of the shows, with the characters of the classic shows on top and the new modern shows on the bottom! Makes you realize just how much the franchise keeps growing!
That 2009 Blu set is awful. Its the original non remastered versions with DNR and artificial sharpening, edge enhancement and incorrect color timing. I’d recommend waiting til the 4K UHD Discs for the TNG films are made available. I mean its the old transfers for 1-6 as well, truly terrible. The only restored film in the bunch was star trek 2 and it was a lowry botch job.
Did anyone else notice the “Every Series. Every Episode” graphic is missing something?
Should we tell Paramount?
What is it missing?
Star Trek Enterprise is missing. Paramount often drop it off their promotion.
Oh I see. But not a big deal. They are promoted everywhere else but yeah they could’ve showed someone here too.
People have said it in responses – but as someone who works in the business, I can tell you that these licensing agreements are often made years in advance, with the windows established at the time of contract. So while I’m sure that Paramount isn’t happy about it, they have to honor those agreements.
The silver lining for Paramount is that people who come to HBO to watch the movies and want more ST are more likely to be interested in subscribing to Paramount.
My first thought actually was…merger coming.
Nope. HBO is newly owned by Discovery/Warner Bros. Paramount is too big for them to acquire given the staggering debt load DWB is carrying and there is no way DWB would sell off HBO to Paramount.
Paramount is pathetic. Their treatment of Star Trek is as bad as their sports coverage. It’s as if they don’t really care.
Paramount has sports coverage? Badminton perhaps? LOL
Pickleball no doubt.
The only sports I was aware of was for some reason they were the only outlet for USMNT road WC qualifying matches last year. CONCACAF has some odd TV deals. One or two US matches were shown on their CBS Sports Network, though. But not all.
I take it you’ve never heard of the UEFA Champions League.
So many people are getting angry about this, which is inexplicable. This is how contracts of exclusivity work. They had preexisting contracts of exclusivity, and they’re legally bound to honor them. Once those contracts run out, this won’t happen. It’s no big deal.
Exactly. The misplaced drama from some fans though is certainly entertaining…lol
Yeah, these are contracts that were made years ago. Perhaps even decades ago, before they could foresee the streaming era. They were profitable contracts and seemed to best way to get Star Trek movies to fans at the time. No getting around it until they expire. Eventually it will all even out.
At least they’re streaming again now.
I blame Q. He did something!
WHEN WILL THE TNG MOVIES COME OUT ON 4K BLU RAY FINALLY? And PLEASE Paramount, invest in DOLBY ATMOS mixes!
I’d rather the original mixes. for 1-6 and the TNG films. You can only hear the original audio for Star Treks 2-6 on DVD. Star Trek 1 the original audio is only on VHS and Laserdisc. The second 2 Disc DVD release of the TNG films had both the Dolby and DTS mixes. The 5.1 on the 2 disc DVD sets of 2-6 were based on the 70mm allegedly. I have no idea where the 7.1 mixes came from. But there is no original audio on 4K and its a joke. Finally a filmic picture without DNR and no original audio.
Odd that they wouldn’t go over to Showtime, seeing as P+ owns them. But I already have HBO Max thanks to my internet provider, so I guess I can do a rewatch of the TNG films while working from home ;) Still, as others have stated, this is dumb and frustrating for fans who purchased P+ to have “all of Trek in one place.”
No one actually read the story, apparently. This deal was struck before P+ launched. Once the contractual obligation is fulfilled, the content will be back.
As an aside, with Trek getting some exposure elsewhere it could add some new fans to the franchise.
It’ll be back on Paramount after HBO’s contract ends.
Agreed.
For many of us this matters not. We have the films on BD already. I just got the new HD of TMP and will be checking it out very soon.
The directors cut of VI is only in 4K. Because some bean counter figured an additional Blu-Ray disc would cost the studio money, the Blu-Ray is only the theatrical.
Well that’s horrible news. This is like the news that after I bought the previous set finding out that only WoK was an actual HD transfer.
*sigh*