Theme-matched perfectly to the week of Comic-Con, Marvel has unveiled more details about their upcoming mega-release of The Avengers and the films that preceded it on Blu-ray. It’s all part of The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One, a set destined to become one of the most heavily sought after releases of the year. This week not only brings a new look at the set, seen above, but a look at the breathtaking individual movie sleeves with art by Matthew Fergusen. Check those out after the jump and please, clean up your mess when you’re done.

There used to be a time when only die-hard comic book fans knew what Stan Lee looked like. His likeness appeared in many of the Marvel comic books for the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but to the average person, he was nothing more than a guy with some shaded glasses. Then Hollywood started putting the guy in some movies. He’s never had a very big part, but to honor the man for helping to create some of the most legendary superheroes (and some of the biggest moneymakers for the movie business), Lee has been given customary cameos in almost every major movie that has been made from characters he helped create. Those who have seen The Amazing Spider-Man (which should be most of you faithful readers, by now) were treated to one of his best and funniest cameos yet. And with more Marvel movies coming down the pike, he’s sure to show up many times again. This gave us a chance to look back on his many appearances over the years and assemble a list of his ten best cameos. Excelsior!

With The Amazing Spider-Man swinging into theaters this weekend, I wanted to take a moment to look back on past superhero movies – not to analyze the characters, the various actors who have played them, the directors, the reboots, remakes, or re-imaginings – I want to talk about the music. (Because, you know, that’s what we do here.) The music, which accompanies these larger than life films full of cutting edge technology, vehicles, and gadgets, but often sounds like it was pulled straight out of the ‘90s rock scene. I have rounded up five songs from various superhero movies that seem a bit out of place alongside the web slinging, Hulk smashing action on screen. These songs usually end up playing over the film’s credits (and rarely end up in the movie itself), but even as a footnote, these particular tracks never sound quite on par with the films they are featured in. The songs attempt to add to the emotional undertone of the film or provide one last blast of adrenaline as you walk out of the theater, but with all the high octane action seen on screen, it is strange to see these films paired with songs that do not quite match their tone and pacing.

The title alone is tantalizing enough – Item 47. Just what is Item 47? And just how would the latest Marvel short (dubbed “One-Shots”) tie into the increasingly large and complex cinematic world that Marvel has crafted? We’ve known for weeks that the next One-Shot would appear as a bonus on the upcoming The Avengers home-video release (and, well, duh, of course there’s a new One-Shot, as is becoming par for the course after both Thor and Captain America got one), but the events of that film looked to have (spoiler alert?) taken the star of the previous One-Shots out of commission. Now, thanks to EW (who also debuted that first still up above), we’ve got a bevy of new information about Item 47, including plot, stars, and just what that title means. Even better? The skew of Item 47 signals Marvel’s interest in exploring the “real world” that’s currently home to all manner of superheros, and that’s the sort of interest that can expand the universe exponentially. The outlet reports that Item 47 stars Lizzy Caplan (awesome) and Jesse Bradford (also awesome) as “a down-on-their-luck couple who find one of the discarded alien guns from the finale to The Avengers — and proceed to make some incredibly bad decisions.” Really, what would you do if your city was attacked and a giant Chitauri gun fell into your hands?

What is Movie News After Dark? At all times, it is an attempt to run down 8 or so stories that you should be reading today. Or should have read today, and should be reading tonight. Sometimes it’s helpful. Sometimes it’s silly. But it always is. We begin tonight with a shot from Disney’s potentially very cool 2D animated shot Paper Man. Classy, simple and with little bits of color (look closely, it’s there) and some really great buzz from the animation community are fueling the fire around this one, which will play alongside Wreck-It-Ralph in November.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column about movies that’s been kickin’ ass and takin’ names since the sun came up, but for some reason it still waited until late at night to bring you all the movie news of the day. It’s eccentric like that. We begin tonight with an image of Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy in Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik’s new film based on the adaptation of the novel “Cogan’s Trade.” They are but two of the badass names attached to said project, which includes Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta and Sam Shepard, among others. Not bad.

Last week, the utterly shocking news broke that not only was Warner Bros. pursuing a Justice League movie, but it also was in no way at all ever influenced by the unbridled financial success of Marvel’s The Avengers. We can all believe that, can’t we? After all, we read it on the internet. With Man of Steel coming out next year and a no-brainer Batman reboot coming now that Christopher Nolan’s movies are wrapping up this summer, this is an opportunity for Warner Bros. and DC to set a new stage. Plus, with adaptations of The Flash and Lobo, and the potential for a Green Lantern reboot, Warner Bros. and DC have things laid out for them to work out very similar to the pre-Avengers line of films. But this is Hollywood, and so many things can go potentially wrong with a project like this. Here are seven ways Warner Bros. can avoid a potential disaster as they develop this film series.

For filmgoers frustrated with a visionary filmmaker whose films’ quality provided diminishing returns as he became ever more prolific, Prometheus was anticipated as a welcome return to form. For those hungry for R-rated, thinking person’s science fiction, Prometheus provided a welcome respite from a summer promising mostly routine franchise continuations. For those who see the 1970s and 1980s as the height of modern Hollywood filmmaking, Prometheus promised a homecoming for a type of blockbuster that was long thought to be dead. Prometheus even beat out The Dark Knight Rises as the most anticipated summer film of 2012 on this very site. But then the reviews came in. And thus began the qualifying, criticizing, parsing out, hyperbolizing, dissecting, backlashing, and disappointed exhaling. There were many responses to Prometheus, but very few of them were the songs of praise that a film this hotly anticipated – and highly desired – by all means should have satisfyingly warranted.

Given his prominent roles in both The Avengers and Snow White and the Huntsman, which have been two of the biggest financial successes so far this summer, actor Chris Hemsworth finds himself being in the enviable position of looking like a box office commodity. Basically, he’s the anti-Taylor Kitsch (sorry Tim Riggins, but it’s true). Given all of this newfound star power and perceived money drawing ability, Hemsworth’s name is the perfect asset to be used to bring a once-shelved project back from the brink. Or, at least, that’s what producers Joe Roth, Paula Weinstein, Will Ward, and Palak Patel are hoping. They’ve just attached him to star in a film called In the Heart of the Sea, which was originally being developed by Intermedia back in 2000, and has been slipping in and out of developmental hell ever since. In the Heart of the Sea is an adaptation of a Nathaniel Philbrick book of the same name, which tells the true story of a whaling ship named the Essex that was stalked and destroyed by an evil, vindictive sperm whale back in 1820. If that story sounds a bit familiar (and shame on you if it doesn’t!), that’s because this is the same disaster that inspired Herman Melville’s literary classic, “Moby Dick.” The difference between this text and that is that Philbrick’s book is a much more fact-based account of the tragedy which stemmed from his reading of little-known documents chronicling the tragedy as well as a written account

With all the talk of Ridley Scott, Damon Lindelof and the return of the Alien franchise, our best guess is that you too didn’t realize that a new Madagascar movie had hit theaters. It did, oddly enough. And families did not forget about it. In fact, they remembered it so vividly that it propelled Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted to a win over the R-rated Prometheus and a weekend win. The family toon featuring the voice work of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer became the second film in the franchise to top $60 million in its opening weekend, bested slightly by Madagascar 2‘s 2009 release. For Prometheus, it didn’t have much trouble becoming the highest opening of the Alien franchise, considering the rest of its competition opened in the 1980s and 1990s. Either way, $50 million dollars isn’t half bad for a second place finish.

Sure, The Avengers being really awesome probably had a lot to do with the fact that it’s now the third most money-making movie of all time. But, more than that, the film probably has Marvel’s long term planning to thank for its extreme level of success. Instead of just making a movie about a team of superheroes, Marvel first introduced each member of the team in their own films, they dropped hints about the fact that they would all be coming together at some point, and, when it was all said and done, The Avengers finally premiered after six years of build-up and anticipation. That’s pretty unprecedented. Seeing as they own DC Comics, Warner Bros also has a fairly impressive stable of superheroes at their command. And they’ve even managed to leverage their properties into a bunch of successful animated television shows in the past. But, in recent years, the only character they’ve had any real success with in the live-action feature format is Batman. They’re not even close to doing something with DC’s premier superhero team, The Justice League, that could be on par with what Marvel did with The Avengers.

Three is the magic number for The Avengers this week. Not only is it third on the weekend Box Office (behind Snow White and the Huntsman and Men in Black 3), it’s also the third highest grossing movie in the world, and the third highest grossing on the all-time domestic charts. With a continued strong showing, it surpassed The Dark Knight ($533m) to take the spot with $552m. It’s worldwide gross is over $1.3b. In order to take the #2 domestic spot, the Joss Whedon flick would have to take down another $106m to best Titanic – a task that seems equally possible and unlikely. So, it turns out people like this thing. However, Batman will have a chance to answer later this summer with The Dark Knight Rises. Will it be even bigger? [Box Office Mojo]

It’s been no secret that Shane Black’s upcoming entry into the Iron Man franchise has quite a few villains incorporated into its plot. Ben Kingsley is in the film as a shadowy string puller who may or may not be a version of classic Iron Man villain the Mandarin, Guy Pearce is playing the scientist who invents the dangerous and tech-based Extremis virus, and James Badge Dale has been recruited to play a guy named Eric Savin who, in the comics, gets turned into a cyborg named Coldblood. That’s quite a few heads for Tony Stark to bust already, so why is SuperHeroHype reporting that yet another Iron Man character, the Iron Patriot, is also going to be featured in the film? Before any theories can be concocted, first it’s necessary to give a rundown on who exactly the Iron Patriot is. In the comic books, there was recently a storyline where Spider-Man villain Norman Osborn took control of S.H.I.E.L.D. and put together his own dark version of The Avengers, which included Osborn himself wearing a version of Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor that was all painted up like the American flag to give people warm and fuzzy Captain America feelings. It was a nefarious plot that might make for a good superhero movie, if not for the fact that Norman Osborn is a Spider-Man character, the rights of which are still in the clutches of Sony…aren’t they?

“If Michael Bay directed Raiders, the Ark would be opened in the first act, and people’s heads would explode through the rest of the film.” I don’t typically seek out wisdom from Twitter, but this below-140-character observation (made by @krishnasjenoi and retweeted by @ebertchicago) struck very close to something that’s been occupying my mind as we enter the fifth week of the summer movie season. Though the statement works better as a fun hypothetical critique than a contestable thesis (in other words, there’s no way we’ll ever really know, thank goodness), the sentiment feels relevant. Though the modern Hollywood blockbuster has been a staple of studios’ summer scheduling for almost forty years, the films that become blockbusters don’t look or feel very similar to the films of the 70s and 80s that somehow paradoxically led to today’s cavalcade of sequels, franchises, adaptations and remakes. Criticizing Hollywood’s creative crisis is nothing new. But with the mega-success of The Avengers and the continuing narrative of failure and disappointment that has thus far characterizes every major release since, it seems that this crisis has been put under a microscope. The moment where unprecedented success is the only kind of achievement Hollywood can afford and the well of decade-old franchises and toy companies become desperately mined for material is something we were warned about. But Hollywood’s creativity-crippling reliance on existing properties is not the only, or even the primary, problem faced by mass market filmmaking’s present moment. The bloated numbers sought after each and

Even though Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and the rest of the Men in Black III crew have serious reason to celebrate this Memorial Day weekend, beyond the fact that living in America grants them the freedom to make cartoonish movies about time traveling space alien bugs and the threats they pose to Earth’s security, they are at the beginning of their moneymaking journey. Joss Whedon and Marvel’s The Avengers, on the other hand, is full-steam ahead and knocking down seemingly every record in its path. 

Seeing as the Iron Man franchise is coming up on its third film – and the first that’s seeing a changeover of directors – one might think that Marvel would be hedging their bets with it and lowering their expectations. How many times will audiences really keep coming back to watch Robert Downey Jr. playing the same snarky character? And even if the love for this take on Tony Stark can last indefinitely, will the loss of franchise launcher Jon Favreau in the role of director lead to Iron Man 3 being tonally different from its predecessors? And if so, how will Downey’s smitten audience react to going in for more Iron Man and getting something that feels unfamiliar? When it comes to an aging franchise that’s in the midst of creative turnover, one would imagine that a movie studio would start playing things a little bit safe. But seeing as The Avengers just came out and pretty much scooped up all of the money left in the global economy and became an international topic of culture conversation, that’s not the direction they’ve decided to go. Marvel heroes are the “in thing” right now, and their new-found level of relevance has led the studio to believe that they can do more.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column that has been returned to the hands of its rightful owner, for now. But before we get to my triumphant return after a week of vegging out and eating BBQ, lets give a round of applause to Nathan Adams, Luke Mullen, Kate Erbland, Kevin Carr and Robert Fure, who did a wonderful job last week during guest week. I don’t know about you, but I lizzed a few times while reading their work. Lets hope that I can bring the same verve to this week’s return. We begin, of course, with naughty bits… Several new images from Brian De Palma’s Passion this past week, courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival. That includes the above image, depicting a very devious, scantily clad Rachel McAdams burning a hole in my heart of hearts. It’s the eyes that do it. And the stockings. Definitely the stockings.

Can you hear it? Out there in the distance, on a cold crag of rock with the wind whipping at its monstrous back is a marketing department VP howling at the empty night. Battleship – in all of its $209m budget plus probably $200m more in marketing – was hoping for the kind of win at the box office that would signal the go-ahead for two more movies and the trappings that come with franchises. It did not succeed. As proof that sticking feathers up your butt and calling yourself a chicken doesn’t work, the Peter Berg-directed pile of messy noises made a paltry $25m this weekend, coming in at #2. A fitting, metaphorical place. It’s not surprising that The Avengers ended up back in the top spot, this time earning another $55m – bringing its domestic take closer to the half-billion mark and making its grand total right at $1.8b (with a b).

What is Movie News After Dark DRINKING? It’s the end result of a long work day, a half dozen mini doughnuts, a glass of cheap Canadian whisky, Robert Fure, and a keyboard. Suck on it, suckers! This week’s movie news after Drinking is brought to you by Revel Stoke spiced whisky (We should not get paid for this because I’m not drinking this again. Or no we should still get paid, but I’m not drinking this again). But basically the deal is I get kind of drunk and then try to type up a whole bunch of movie news before my arms stop working. If you’re wondering why I’m typing all this nonsense, it’s because we need a certain amount of buffer before we move into the news to put a proper text break in here. But totally keep reading because Will Smith NO JOKE SLAPS A RUSSIAN IN THE FACE IN THE FIRST STORY. (OH LOOK AT ME I’M FRILMCRIT HULK BECAUSE THIS IS ALL CAPITALS)

What is Movie News After Dark? Tonight, it’s hanging on by a thread, as we enter Day Four of Dear Leader Neil Miller’s Mental Health Break Staycation. While he’s off eating the finest BBQ that FSR’s hometown of Austin, Texas has to offer and Instagraming all the way, the rest of us are slaving over our keyboards and monitors to bring you the best content we possibly can. Of course, for tonight’s round of MNAD, that includes kitty GIFs, Battleship love letters, and something about the world’s most green soda missing the boat on a marketing opportunity and saddling up with the wrong superhero (to super-sad effect). It’s Movie News After Dark! And, man, is it tired. I won’t bury the lede here, folks, some people love Peter Berg‘s Battleship. Our Cole Abaius is not one of them. But guess who is! Huffington Post’s Mike Ryan! The scribbler has penned a love letter to the film, and while I can’t quite agree with the sentiment, he brings up some interesting and articulate points. And, as Ryan is both a friend and a colleague, I can assure you – he’s not joking and he’s not trolling.