Release
1996 marked the 30th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise. First Contact was heavily marketed, to an extent not seen since the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Several novelizations of the film were written for different age groups. Playmates Toys produced six- and nine-inch action figures in addition to ship models and a phaser. Two "making of" television specials premiered on HBO and the Sci-Fi Channel, as well as being promoted during a 30th anniversary television special on UPN. The theatrical trailer to the film was included on a Best of Star Trek music compilation, released at the same time as the First Contact soundtrack. Simon & Schuster Interactive produced a Borg-themed video game for personal computers (separate Macintosh and Windows95 versions were available). The game, Star Trek: Borg, functioned as an interactive movie with scenes filmed at the same time as First Contact's production. Paramount heavily marketed the film on the internet via a First Contact web site that averaged 4.4 million hits a week during the film's opening run, the largest amount of traffic ever on a motion picture site.
The film premiered November 18, 1996 at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The main cast save Spiner were in attendance, as were Moore, Braga, Jerry Goldsmith, and producer Marty Hornstein. Other Star Trek actors present included DeForest Kelley, René Auberjonois, Avery Brooks, Colm Meaney, Armin Shimerman, Terry Farrell, Kate Mulgrew, Roxann Dawson, Jennifer Lien, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang and Robert Picardo. After the screening 1,500 guests crossed the street to the Hollywood Colonnade, where the interiors had been dressed to match settings from the film: the holodeck nightclub, part of the bridge, a "star room", the Borg hive and the "crash 'n' burn lounge". The film received a royal premiere in the United Kingdom, with the first screening attended by Charles, Prince of Wales.
Read more about this topic: Star Trek: First Contact
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)