TNG cost around $7m, with far less to redo. DS9 would need all of the CGI sequences redone. Now as someone else said, they have access to a certain amount of the CGI files somewhere, but entirely new render passes would need to be made of all the scenes with them. Which is considerably more than TNG. $20m could be a conservative estimate when and if any work actually started to recreate those parts of the show.
doesn't matter, ppl are getting nerdier. things that weren't cool to most ppl are now cool. game of thrones wouldn't have done very well in the 80's, neither would lord of the rings have. all of these comic book tv shows and movies would have failed hard. now "ant man" is a success. deep space nine is an excellent show, if it's supported and believed in, it'll make money. it's probably the most underrated scifi show ever made. (which is usually due to marketing failures) they didn't even TRY to sell TNG on blu, I live in bozeman MT, it's a pretty big place, and I never had the opportunity to buy TNG on blu. even now, for the 50th anniversary, it's not available. maybe if they weren't trying to charge $60 per season? or was it 80? I guess if they're only going to be selling it in big cities where the rent is thousands of dollars per bedroom that doesn't seem too ridiculous, lol. great job guys...... back on point, there's no reason that DS9 wouldn't have an audience today. it'll be remastered soon, the broadcasting rights sold to interested networks. it just needs to be advertised more properly. given the content, there could be some really enticing commercials. as soon as CBS has competent, knowledgeable marketers, this will happen. to think that it'll never happen though? this show is FAR too good for that. all truly great things get their dues eventually, some artists weren't appreciated until long after they were dead.
I have to say, I just noticed this week that sometime recently Netflix upgraded Buffy to the 2014 remasters. So I started watching. I've hadn't seem them yet, but I've heard how bad they are. I've only watched a select few of episodes, but I have say they are pretty bad. If CBS were to try something similar "on the cheap," I'd just assume they didn't.
One of us needs to create a loop programme that automatically quotes this every time another newbie comes here and bumps this thread. 1) I'd hardly call those services something accessible to all Americans, and (proportionately) I'd probably argue the majority actually don't access them. People at the lower end of the social economic spectrum can't afford the luxury of a subscription to a service like that, some of them can't even access the internet reliably enough. 2) I live in one of those "international markets", and DS9 isn't even on over here. TOS, TNG and VOY are all being screened, but not DS9.
DS9 will be a twenty year old show. There simply isn't a market for it. Everyday that passes, that market decreases just a little bit more. It isn't Game of Thrones and it isn't Marvel. Even with the success Marvel is having, I don't see anyone going to their back catalog to remaster those projects. Had no issues finding the first four seasons here in Cincinnati. But, as those sat on shelves collecting dust, it became harder to find the later seasons. There is this misconception that TNG wasn't advertised. It was. There were even theatrical releases of select episodes of the first three seasons the day before they were for sale.
My experience with TNG-R was that Season One was promoted up the wazoo by CBS and could be bought from almost everywhere, but with each passing season it got harder and harder to find them as new releases in stores. I ended up having to source most of them from online retailers (something I usually only try to do as a last resort.) I certainly remember TNG season one getting lavish fold-out advertising spreads in various magazines at the time, and it's probably no coincidence that season one is said to have been the best seller of them all. CBS really dropped the ball in just thinking the consumers would just stay with them all the way through come what may.
But Star Trek fans didn't even stay with them. The sales were anemic by any standard one wants to go by. I went to Walmart and season three had a layer of dust on it.
I actually agree. CBS simply assumed there was an in-built audience that would upgrade to the new versions. The 'Trekkie Dollar' was built into their projections on the profitability of the project all the way through. By all accounts they were actually surprised when it failed to actually materialize that way, but again TNG-R failed because of their own bad decisions. They didn't market it to the casual audience effectively, and they failed to convince enough Trekkies that it was worth the upgrade, or at least not for the $$$ they were charging per season. Add to this blind alleys like the 'two-parters-as-movie' releases. In the past all of this would've had an in-built base that would buy them all no matter what, but they seriously misjudged the market. As time went on the project just kept bleeding money. The bottom line is that the experience of TNG-R burnt their fingers, and they're wary of remastering DS9 and VOY as a result. EDIT: I'm not in any way implying the fandom were responsible for that. CBS made a lot of bad business decisions along the way and it came back to roost in a poor ROI.
Honestly, I think everyone involved in the project knew there was no chance for DS9 or Voyager from the moment they signed on. There was never much of a secondary market for those shows. The National Network/Spike TV paid a billion dollars for the 24th century shows and hardly ever played the latter two. They did one run through of each, and then the only time they were seen were sporadically at 3am.
I think the interest was probably there, but the $70-80 price tag (while more than justified) was just too much for many fans. And frankly even for me the novelty and excitement of the releases started to wear off after about the third season. Unfortunately there probably would have been far fewer people willing to spend that amount of money for seven seasons of DS9.
And also a link to the old TNG-R thread where the same claims of "Never gonna happen" were made over and over. You know, just for balance.
Maybe my memory is faulty, this article lists the price as $364 million, but I seem to remember a much higher number... http://www.trektoday.com/news/281100_05.shtml
Variety also reports the $364 million dollar number. It has been seventeen years... http://variety.com/2000/tv/news/par-seeing-stars-thanks-to-trek-deal-1117789711/ Though that doesn't change that DS9 (2004) and Voyager (2006) didn't get a lot of air time during the deal.
CBS has Discovery and their CBS All Access ventures to consider now, those will be taking up all of their "Trek on TV" considerations for the next couple of years. The down time between on air shows has nearly ended, and the window of oppertunity for having the time and cash to remaster projects has closed. Why bother spending $20m on a 20 year old show that isn't even repeated very much on TV or selling it's DVD's anymore when they have an actual show airing that needs the attention and funding?
It'll happen, but not in the way everyone wants it to. Everything that's not on film will be upconverted. The only optical/CG effects they'll recomposite will be phaser and transporter beams, if they even bother doing any. Enterprise did it, X-Files did it, the cost to fully remaster DS9 and VOY would be ridiculous without making exceptions.
I guess the only thing one can somewhat realistically hope for at this point is something like “The Next Level” for Deep Space Nine on blu-ray with three or four fan favorite episodes remastered. Maybe the cost-benefit ratio is unfavorable even for something like that, but I'd love such a release.
Technology is always improving. What may be prohibitively expensive today, my be relatively cheap a few years from now. I won't give up hope.