Paramount originally began work on a Star Trek feature film in 1975 after lobbying by the creator of the franchise, Gene Roddenberry. The studio scrapped the project two years later in favor of creating a TV series, Star Trek: Phase II, with the original cast. However, following the huge success of Star Wars and Close Encounters, Paramount would change its mind again, halting production on the TV series and adapting its pilot episode into the 1979 Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Five more films featuring the entire original cast followed. The cast of the 1987–1994 spin-off series Star Trek: The Next Generation starred in a further four films. A reboot to the original television series, simply titled Star Trek, was released in May 2009, and a sequel has been announced as in development.

The Star Trek films have received critically mixed reviews, and received 14 Academy Award nominations (winning one in 2010). Four of the previous films had been nominated mainly in the areas of makeup, music, set design, and sound design.

The early Star Trek films were originally released on VHS; competitive pricing of The Wrath of Khan's videocassette helped bolster the adoption of VHS players in households. Later films were also released on LaserDisc as well. For those films that did not receive an initial DVD release, Paramount released simple one-disc versions with no special features. Later, the first ten films were released in two-disc collector's versions, with The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan branded as "director's cuts", followed by later box set releases. The films are now available on Blu-ray high definition discs.

Source: Wikipedia, "Star Trek (film series)", available under the CC-BY-SA License.