While the classic Star Trek TV series have all settled in at Paramount+, the Star Trek movies have continued to bounce around. However, as of next week they are coming back to the streaming service that purports to be “the home of Star Trek” in the USA.
All the movies in one place
At the beginning of this year, the six TOS-era Star Trek movies (The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, and The Undiscovered Country) and four TNG-era movies (Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis) all moved to the Max streaming service and the HBO premium cable channel. That licensing deal wraps up at the end of June and Paramount+ has confirmed that all 10 of those movies will return to “the Home of Star Trek” on Monday, July 1. The returning movies includes the 4K Directors Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. With the addition of the current Paramount+ library that includes the three J.J. Abrams-produced Kelvin Universe movies, Paramount+ will again feature the full Star Trek movie library, at least for the short term.
The Star Trek movies on Max (but not for long)
The future is licensing
We have seen some or all of the Star Trek movies leave and return to Paramount+ (and previously CBS All Access) over recent years, so it’s quite possible another licensing deal could see the movies exit again. In fact, Paramount Global has been talking more about licensing content as the company struggles to pay off the heavy debt load it has incurred over recent years building up its (still not profitable) streaming service. It would not be surprising to also see the five “legacy” Star Trek TV series again licensed out to other streamers, although those would likely not be exclusive. Before 2022, in the USA Paramount had licensed the classic TV shows to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video concurrently.
Of course, the future of Paramount+ itself is still up in the air. After talks broke down for the Paramount Global merger with Skydance earlier this month, the company is now focused on ways to streamline and cut costs. This includes looking to to form a joint venture for its streaming service, with potential partnerships suggested with Waner Discovery’s Max, Amazon Prime Video, and Comcast’s Peacock. Presumably, the legacy and Paramount+ original Star Trek shows (and movies, including the upcoming Section 31 streaming movie) would be part of this joint venture. However, recent history shows that nothing can be certain when it comes to Paramount Global and how it is handling its streaming service… Actually, there is one certainty: pricing on Paramount+ is set to go up in August.
Find more news on streaming and home video at TrekMovie.com.
Does nobody here not already own all of thee?
Are young people collecting discs like we oldsters do/did? I’m sure that there are many readers here who don’t have all the movies, but maybe the majority of us do…?
I don’t….
The extras on the discs alone are worth it as well as the films themselves.
Kevin, I don’t own ‘The Final Frontier’. Never have and never will.
tbh it doesnt really matter any more… paramount is in freefall… they are prepping to break it up and sell the pieces so the shareholders can make a bit more money vs keeping it all together and saving thousands of jobs. they’re even discussing selling the lot. trek is gonna end up somewhere else. let’s just hope it’s not bought by a private equity firm.
… or Disney.
yeah i’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than the opposite. kind of like when they bought the muppets and did nothing with them for 10 years. it took a lot of work from jason siegel to get them to finally make new things. but the whole trek universe might be cut into pieces. then legal issues could stop it all like what happened to friday the 13th. soon we will just be getting merchandise as the equity firm that buys it rents out trek to anyone with money.
I am really hoping it will be Netflix or Amazon buys it. Amazon might be the best choice for getting multiple series- they have run multiple series with the Boys, and with the end of the Boys coming and now with no more Ms. Maisel, they might really want a signature franchise.
Disney would be a mess.
HBO/Warner is barely in less trouble than Paramount.
Apple might be ok, but their release schedule gets iffy- could be years between seasons, and might only see 8 episodes of something every year or two.
hbo/warners is in much much better shape than paramount. but like so many companies that merge and merge they acquire debt. it’s all fake anyway. i just read michael jackson’s estate when he died was in 500 million debt but now after settling everything theyre worth 2 billion. it’s all smoke and mirrors. paramount though is in the hands of sherri redstone and she wanted full control and got it and now she wants to flush it so she and the shareholders can be even richer.
netflix doesn’t care one bit about quality… they are all algorithm and what the computers tell them. if that was always the case then trek wouldnt have been around much. every stumble wouldve ended it.
im hoping after seeing what’s gonna happen to paramount redstone goes back to ellison. he wanted to keep the company intact. but i dont know if it’s possible for everyone from redstone to the shareholders to cash out and still leave a working company behind.
they’re prob gonna sell the library and without that there’s really no paramount anymore.
Disney wouldn’t be permitted to buy it. Also Disney is in serious debt.
Good for them. I own them all, so don’t really care if they are or not.
I might be late to this, but question the wisdom of walling off Star Trek. For one thing, I don’t think there’s any wisdom in the Paramount c suite, and so any decision from there is automatically questionable. And then you think about how popular culture has segmented so much that it’s tough to stand out amongst all the noise; but if you’re a property on a teeny tiny streamer, aren’t you obviously less loud than the rest? Wouldn’t it make more sense for Trek to be on a network (lol) or Netflix? The Star Trek Channel/Paramount+ experiment was never all that wise to begin with, but given what we’re seeing with the whole streaming experiment, seems like it’s time to move on.
P.S. It probably would’ve been cheapest and most profitable to remaster DS9 & VOY and simply continue to license the whole franchise, with maybe 1 or 2 new shows financed.
The problem is that all these network execs don’t know how to compete with large streamers, and think that just doing the same thing Netflix of Hulu does will help. But like you’ve pointed out there’s no sense is having just a single franchise carry your entire network. And as much as I hate to admit, Trek may have a loyal following but it’s not as big as Star Wars. Hell even Disney has SW, Marvel, it’s animated features, etc.
But when the streaming wars began everyone thought “People will pay to watch our stuff on demand” – whether you were P+/CBS All Access, NBC, etc. It’s not working out for most as we have seen, though some shifted to be more ‘clustered’ like Peacock for NBC and Bravo reality, Max/Discovery, Hulu/FX.
Compartmentalization was the way to go for awhile, hoping to build streamer growth around It. That’s effectively dead now. Now, they’re back to licensing It out to other streamers as a cash infusion on the corporation’s bottom line.
“There are only two ways I know to make money in business: bundling and unbundling” — Jim Barksdale, ex-CEO of Netscape
Very little, imo. I’m an old fart who spends some time in younger fan spaces, and most of the newer Trek fans I’ve met found their way to the franchise from the Kelvin timeline movies or when all of the series were on Netflix. The easier access, the better.
“the Home of Star Trek”
BAH!
“…except Prodigy, LD, the movies when the license randomly goes back to HBO for 6 months…”
No LDS will stay on P+ after its last season.
A quick revised ‘Best to Worst’ (IMHO)
II – The best one by far, there’s just no debate on this is there. KHAAAN!!
III – a worthy sequel, id hazard a guess this is second best for most OG hard TOS’ers like myself.
VI – it doesn’t feel right not putting IV next but VI is just too good not to have 3rd best.
IV – the most 80s movie (obviously) like Trek does BTTF meets Beverly Hills Cop (minus Eddie).
FC – like II the best TNG just no debate. Made Trek ‘cool’ for a brief time which seemed impossible.
GEN – despite the missed opportunity of both casts, its still a very important movie in the canon.
TMP – yeh everyone loves it now (esp the TOS hard ballers like RMB) but I can’t give it any higher.
V – loved it that summer89 (with Indy,Batman) and still do, but know its bad and can’t put it higher.
NEM – its had abit of an reappraisal after ST:P and amazing end battle but g’damn its dull as hell.
INS – THE worst Trek film of all (even worse than Beyond! of which it feels/looks quite similar)
(Kelvin films: ST09/ID down to just after GEN/before TMP for me these days. few years ago id have put both above GEN, maybe higher.. Beyond angers me more than ever bc of what happened to Orci’s superior sounding timeline under threat/Shatner swansong ST3 so id put that just above INS but below NEM, as NEM deserves abit more leeway now after ST Picard)
Lol i love when people share their lists! My list is similar (and with the JJ movies):
I absolutely love First Contact as it is my favorite movies of all time, warts and all. In my list, I have major problems with all the films from rank 8 and below. So, for me, the only good Star Trek movies are my top 7. Yes, I do not like TUC with the exception of the final shot.
TUC has some real problems. I don’t rank it as low as you do, but I’m not a fan of some very key aspects. The racism from our own characters really flies in the face of how they’ve been written over the years, and I hate it. Spocks mind invasion is a problem. Not because he went there, but becuase he goes there, and then says ‘Call excelsior, Sulu will know. Spock would only resort to such an invasion If it were so easily resolved. blasphemy.
The biggest problem with TUC is that it was no “whodunit,” as Walter Koenig crowed when it was released. There was no sense of betrayal when Valeris was revealed to be collaborating with the Klingon hardliners, because she was the New Character. It really needed to be Saavik, as originally intended, to pack a punch.
It also would have been stronger had the “Martia” character been a Klingon dissident who helped Kirk and McCoy escape from Rura Penthe — again, as originally intended. That might really have explained what triggered Kirk’s re-evaluation of his hatred for Klingons. (The ENT prequel “Judgement,” where an honorable Klingon defense attorney gets sent to Rura Penthe alongside Archer and helps Archer escape, does a lot to make up for this flaw, though.)
The anti-Klngon racism? Well, it disturbed me when I first saw the movie, but in fairness, Klingons did kill David Marcus, Kirk’s only son, in cold blood ten years earlier. I can understand why Kirk would harbor some blind spots towards Klingons, after that. He wasn’t the same unscarred commander we saw in “Balance of Terror.” “I need my pain,” and all that.
And Nimoy had a beautifully acted moment when Scotty began lecturing him about how “Klingons don’t value life the way we do” — the eyes of the emotion-less Vulcan really conveyed a sense of profound disappointment and despair that his entire Starfleet career suddenly stood for nothing.
It wasn’t perfect, but I think TUC improved with time, unlike TVH.
You’re not wrong about a lot of things that would have made it better.. but to me, they’re improvements, not outright flaws. I really don’t have a problem with Kirk’s position on Klingons.. his stance on not trusting them isn’t an egregious act of racism as much as it’s rooted in personal pain, and that’s supported by the story. No, it’s not the right response, but you get why he’s in that place. It’s everyone else acting in a racist way that bothers me. I don’t hate the movie, but a lot of its key issues have gotten worse with time for me.
Can’t say the OS crew have been big fans of the Klingons, especially after they murdered their captain’s son.
For me my ratings are:
1. WoK
2. TUC
3. FC
4. TvH
5. TSFS
6. BEY
7. GEN.
8. ST09
9. INS
10. STID
11. TFF.
12. TMP
13. NEM
I’ll do mine as tiers
1- TMP | TWOK
2- TVH | TUC | FC
3- TSFS | ST09 | STB
4- TFF | GEN
5- INS | NEM |STID
Always a fun thread, ranking the movies. My favorites, also by tiers. (Within each tier, my favorite may fluctuate, but I’ve tried to list the best first.)
The good:
1. TMP | FIRST CONTACT | WRATH OF KHAN (TWOK wasn’t the movie with the most potential or highest concept, but unlike TUC or TFF, what TWOK sought to accomplish, it executed perfectly).
2. UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY | FINAL FRONTIER (my “spicy” take is that TFF is significantly underrated; see my post last week on the subject!). Also, to the extent we think of PIC season 3 as a final TNG movie, it would probably go here.
3. NEMESIS (another spicy take: NEM wasn’t perfect, but it too was underrated, as was Tom Hardy’s performance. The Picard-Shinzon scene in the ready room was pure Star Trek gold, for instance. It would have done better had it not been preceded by the insipid INS and by a general excess of Star Trek products at the time.)
The middling:
4. BEYOND | VOYAGE HOME | SEARCH FOR SPOCK (TVH is overrated; it gets worse with each viewing, but I do like the 24th century bits.)
5. GENERATIONS | ST09
The awful:
6. INTO DARKNESS
7. INSURRECTION
OK my turn:
Wrath of Khan
First Contact
The Undiscovered Country
The Voyage Home
The Search for Spock
Generations
Beyond
Insurrection
Final Frontier
STO9
TMP
STID
Nemesis
(Haonestly, all the others after Beyond doesn’t really matter that much in terms of order, they are all just pretty bad to me)
Why didn’t you just list the Kelvin films with the others?
Bc the news story is about the original 10 films so i added the kelvins at the end as a footnote
OK gotcha.
Love these too. I could probably have two lists, one for the movies that are my favorites, and which I think are best. This is favorites.
TWOK – This one is favorite on this one. It’s the best propulsion forward for the characters of them all.
TMP – It’s grown on me tremendously. Easily the most cinematic, & has the Trek Mantra of storytelling at its very heart.
TVH – this the 2nd best of the Trek Mantra of storytelling
TUC – It has a lot of flaws in the story, gets some key things wrong, but is very well constructed and told.
FC – Best of the TNG era
TREK 09 – The fact that it’s in an alternate timeline makes it work for me. The cast is great. But the kicker is that Spock Prime’s arc to embracing his humanity comes full circle.
TSFS – the parts are greater than the whole. Not a great script.
GENS – I actually like it.. sue me. But yeah, it’s pretty flawed.
TFF – Dialogue isn’t great, some really standout character moments amongst some ill conceived plot contrivances.
BEYOND – Feels trope laden. Enterprise as an emotional loss was not earned.
INS – I barely remember it. Felt like a TV episode in the worst way. (there is a way that can be a positive, but this ain’t it!)
NEM – Yeah, it’s just doesn’t work. Trying to replicate Spock’s sacrifice may make sense in the story, but It feels like a lazy way of reaching an end for a character to add weight to the story. Didn’t work.
STID – This is where I could really go off. The reason I think it’s the worst as well as my least favorite is it pisses me off, and I think it’s objectively bad in its conception and execution. Even though you can change a character because it’s set in a different timeline, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Shoehorning Khan, and then matching the Spock death scene, and reversing it, was utterly stupid. JJ’s mystery box really hurts what could be an engaging overall story of corruption in Starfleet.
TMP way better in its UE 4k version
Absolutely.
Am still wading through the bonus content on the blu ray
My list:
By this time next year a new company will probably have the rights to Star Trek while Paramount withers and dies.
If you love the films, BUY THE DVDs/BLUE-RAY — physical media is the way to go rather than rely on when/where your show/movie is available. Buy physical media for the things you want to watch again and again.
Yep I have all 13 movies on discs these days.
I’ve got most of them, but if I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I’ll ever want to watch any of the post-TOS flicks again, save First Contact, so I let those three go the last time we moved. (STV would have gone with ’em, but my TOS films are part of a multi-disc set. 🤣 )
The only movies I ever rewatch are WOK, TUC, FC and TVH. The others if I catch them on TV or something or like with Nemesis I watched it again due to Picard airing…and was still awful.
Brilliant extras across all the discs, box sets
On the article picture it’s Paramount minus 😜
Speaking of movies, it looks like Paramount is in zero rush to get the prequel starfleet movie out they announced like 5 months ago…but is anyone surprised? 😂🙄
I don’t think we’re getting another movie for the 60th anniversary kids because if they started production on it today it probably wouldn’t be ready until summer 2026 the earliest. And that would be ten years since the last one lol.
But yeah Paramount has bigger problems on its plate these days like if its even around in the next two years.
In the current chaos that Paramount is in, I wouldn’t expect any Trek movies other than streaming movies maybe for many years, if ever.
I sadly agree. We probably will get a Legacy streaming movie sooner than another theatrical movie in the next five years; especially if they don’t feel motivated enough to make a movie for Star Treks 60th anniversary.
Frankly, I’d rather they just can the movies altogether. The best Star Trek has always been on the small screen.
The TOS movies worked because they came about ten years after the series ended, which wasn’t too long a gap, but was long enough to get a perspective on the series and say something about how the characters had changed. There’s no other series that really fits that criteria — even the TNG movies, except for NEM, came too soon after TNG.
*Maybe* ENT would fit the bill, but it wasn’t popular enough to sustain a movie on the silver screen. I’d very much like to see an ENT mini-series in the vein of PIC season 3, though.
I really don’t care that much about the movies and agree Star Trek belongs on TV first and foremost.
But it would still be nice to see just one more before I die. 😉
I’m for anything Enterprise related. If not a theatrical movie then a mini series or a streaming movie would be great too! 😀
It’s still possible a movie can come out by 2026 but production of some kind needs to at least start by the end of this year and yeah not holding my breath. I stopped holding it 5 years ago.
It’s funny I read just today they are going to start shooting the Fantastic Four movie next month that Matt Shakman left the Kelvin movie for. And in all this time not only did they NOT replace him with another director, that movie basically went DOA (again) for another movie. And that doesn’t feel anymore realistic it’s happening anytime soon either since there has not been a single word about the script, starting date or just casting rumors for a movie that’s supposed to be out in two years time.
It’s beyond comical but frustrating at this point.
But yeah when you are dealing with a studio that is in the dire straits it’s in right now, it’s not going to be a huge priority to get a movie off the ground that probably be lucky to make $400 million and will be seen mostly by 40+ year old fanboys.
That’s utterly hilarious the Fantastic Four movie starts shooting soon while Star Trek remains as dead as ever.
I bet Shakman is super happy he bailed on this dumpster fire lol. It will probably be out too before a Star Trek movie ever goes into production.
But I know I’m being harsh, at least the movie has a director and writer attached…just like the last four did including Shakman. 🤣
If Paramount was anymore incompetent it would be run by Trump.
And $400 million sounds overly ambitious at this point. I’m guessing around $300 million tops. When an Indiana Jones movie makes only $300 million no telling how badly another Trek movie can do.
Let me make clear $400 million is the high mark. 😉
I suspect it will do what Beyond did and just fall somewhere between $3-400 million. I will cut it in half and say around $350 million unless it generates the kind of hype the first two did and those days are probably long gone.
(OK how did I suck myself in discussing these movies again lol.)
Well that will be fine if the next movie is around $100 million which is feasible I guess.
JJ verse is likely all but dead probably because they can’t find a way to make something much much cheaper than before. Again the biggest troll job by a studio ever lol.
I don’t think the first contact prequel movie is happening either but they will probably just let that one just die out and move on yet again if we hear nothing about it the rest of the year.
Remember when we were told this was a ‘new regime’ and that a new movie was going to start filming any month now once they get those schedules lined up? Yeah that aged well…and its literally been ages now. 😂😂😂😂
Gullible fans will believe anything I guess.
I will never understand Paramount’s bizarre direction with this franchise. Why keep announcing things you clearly don’t have the money, motivation or vision to make it happen first? Why not clear all those hurdles first before you announce anything and just disappoint your fanbase over and over again? I can’t blame people for just having faith (of the heart) its really really really happening this time but at some point it’s time to wise up and stop believing the studio that keeps serving you the same BS for over five years now. Not until there is actual movement like actors on a set and speaking lines. Until then it’s just more fluff.
But I think every one is very skeptical these days lol.
And now it just looks desperate because everyone knows Paramount doesn’t have any real money anymore to finance something as shaky as another tent pole Star Trek movie; at least at a bigger budget. That’s the only way I see this post First Contact movie happening, it’s at a Bumblebee budget level and no longer an Age of Extinction level. But it’s probably not happening at all either way if, once again, nothing happens by the end of the year.
As said we’ll probably just get more streaming movies instead if A. Section 31 is a big enough hit and B. Paramount+ still exists a few years from now. A Legacy streaming movie would probably be much more popular and profitable anyway since that’s what most fans clearly wants over another tired prequel no one was asking for and they don’t have to worry about it being shown in China just to earn a profit.
Yeah a Legacy movie, now that will at least get fans excited!! 😃
And it could happen since Kurtzman himself hinted at it.
Most fans don’t seem to care about another prequel and the only people who cares about any movie are people on boards like this. Make a 25th century movie. It doesn’t need to be $200 million and explosions every 20 minutes like JJ verse.
But that would probably happen by 2028 the way things are going at Paramount so jist make it for streaming.
I still don’t care that much about the Adolf Section 31 movie but I do hope it’s successful so hopefully we can get stuff like a Legacy or even Lower Decks streaming movies!
I purchased the Trek films I like on DVD and digitally. Same with some of the television shows. If Star Trek is one of their main brands they need to keep the films on Paramount Plus. It makes sense. I cancelled Paramount Plus until SNW returns in 2025. There isn’t much on there I find interesting.