Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod, and Roddenberry Productions has made a deal with Toolbox Productions to to put together a new DVD set sourced from a library of 500 hours of unseen behind the scenes footage and interviews from the Star Trek: The Next Generation – Star Trek: Enterprise era.  It’s hard to believe extra footage like this is still around and has never been seen before.  It will contain some great stuff I’m sure and with the popularity of the new movie it seems now is the time to release this material.  To follow this and learn more, watch the Roddenberry.com homepage.

I’ve always been a big fan of the board game, Monopoly.  Way back in the day I even made my own version of it based on of all things (of course) “Star Trek.”  It was crude and I had to make my own cards and so forther, but I loved it.  Well, now you have have your own very professional version of a cool “Star Trek Monopoly” game made by the fine folks over at USAOPOLY.  There were kind enough to send me a review copy several weeks ago along with a copy that I gave away via a contest on the podcast (congrats again to Ricardo).  This is an excellent presentation of both Trek and Monopoly.  Of course the entire board has been reworked featuring places from the Trek universe, ships replace the railroads, and money is now gold pressed latinum.  Another cool feature is you get little miniature, pewter tokens for you playing pieces of such Trek iconic things like Kirk’s chair, a phaser, a Vulvan harp and so on.  You also get completely redone chance and community chest type cards with all sorts of cool Trek details that are now called sensor readings & subspace transmissions.  The game of course plays just like normal Monopoly, but with the added Trek flair to it that makes it even more fun!  So when you get the chance, check the game out over at USAOPOLY and order a copy for yourself.  It’s both a nice collectible that’s a lot of fun to play too!  A great item for everyone to take to the beach or out on their deck during the nice summer months.

Based on the weekend box office totals and very positive reviews, the new “Star Trek” film is a huge hit.  Making more money in it’s opening weekend than any previous Trek film and looking to beat them all easily in total box office.  It’s also doing great in IMAX theaters too (remember it will only be there for 2 weeks).  So tell your friends to go see it – or better yet go with them and enjoy it all again!  Here’s some data for you to look at:

The Thursday night previews for “Star Trek” (from 7:00pm-midnight) generated $4 million.  That spring-boarded into a Friday opening day of $26.89M (including 12:01 screenings), a 1% bump on Saturday to $27.25M and a drop of just 23% to $21.06M on Sunday for what amounts to a Fri-Sat-Sun gross of $75.2M and $79.2M overall when including Thursday night screenings.  That figure more than easily clears initial internal expectations by Paramount Pictures — $50-60M — and thanks to the strong Sunday performance (studio estimates had projected a dip to around $18.3M), it out-performed the studio estimates released on Sunday ($76.5M).  Here’s the daily breakdown with the final actual numbers (via Box Office Mojo):

• Thursday: $4.0M ($4.0M cume)
• Friday: $26.89M ($30.89M)
• Saturday: $27.25M ($58.14M)
• Sunday: $21.06M ($79.20M)

As we are now only about one day away from the event of the summer – yes the new “STAR TREK” movie, I decided to make a music video montage of all the past movies up to this point.  Wow – ten movies so far and a new one tomorrow (with hopefully many more to come).  It’s been a long and fun road with the Trek movies and perhaps the best is yet to come.  I hope you enjoy my little tribute to the past movies of Trek.  See you all in the theaters!

“Entertainment Weekly” magazine has a big article online and coverage all about the new “Star Trek” film this week.  With just a few days away, the media blitz and coverage is really heating up now.  Here’s a little excerpt from the online article.

Everyone is right where they should be. Chekov and Sulu are manning the navigation controls, Uhura’s monitoring communications, and pointy-eared Mr. Spock is hovering over his science station. But standing on the set in front of the ship’s blank viewscreen (planets and stars will be digitally added later) is an all-powerful being capable of destroying the U.S.S. Enterprise and the entire United Federation of Planets. Or, for that matter, saving it. No, it’s not Khan. It’s a guy in chunky eyewear peering into a video monitor.

You can find the rest HERE.

Just a little heads up.  The new “Star Trek” movie will be in IMAX theaters for two weeks only.  So, make sure you don’t miss out on this special experience.

Star Trek will open for a special, limited two-week run in 134 IMAX® theatres domestically, concurrently with the wide release on Thursday, May 7 at 7 pm. The film will also open in 29 IMAX theatres internationally. Star Trek has been digitally re-mastered into the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology.

Due to the limited two-week run and strong buzz, IMAX theatres are adding midnight shows to meet the demand during the limited run, some could even end up showing the movie ‘around the clock.’ You can buy IMAX tickets in advance at Fandango and movietickets.com. For more info visit imax.com.

The ads for the new Trek film seem to be everywhere right now.  I have been seeing them in many of the TV shows I watch and of course online as well.  Most of these contain bits of things we have seen, but also new parts and added little text in each are giving us a better feel for the film.  I continue to be both excited and blown away by what I am seeing.  This movie I believe is going to be very good – and very special.  View some of the latest video’s from the previews showing up below:

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The cast of the new Trek film and JJ Abrams paid a visit recently to entertain the troops in Kuwait by showing them their new movie and spending some time with them.  Most of the cast was there along with JJ and producer Bryan Burke.  For years, entertainers have done this sort of thing to help keep the spirits up of those serving their country overseas.  No matter what you think of the current military action going in the middle east, I think it’s a great thing for JJ and his cast to do.  This isn’t something they had to do and it’s probably not going to impact how well the movie does.  But it is a very nice and a very human thing to do – as Mr. Spock would say.  Kudos to all of you for brightening the day of our military.  Some pictures below of the event and many more pics HERE and of greater size too.