Available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning September 25th is the highly anticipated and soon-to-be summer blockbuster The Avengers, which was produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The film marks the culmination of a promise that began in 2008 with Iron Man and continued in the years to follow with Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, introducing new Marvel characters that all exist in one unifying cinematic Marvel universe. Marvel Studios has succeeded in the impossible, bridging together several different film franchises to create one world where all of Marvel Studio's on-screen characters can coexist and form the popular superhero-team The Avengers, based on the classic comic book co-created by the legendary Stan "The Man" Lee.

The Avengers was written and directed by fanboy favorite Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Cabin in the Woods) and truly stars an all-star cast that includes Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2) as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Evans (Captain America: The First Avenger) as Steve Rogers/Captain America, Mark Ruffalo (Shutter Island) as Dr. Bruce Banner/Hulk, Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as Thor, Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2) as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Jeremy Renner (Thor) as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Samuel L. Jackson (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger) as Nick Fury, Tom Hiddleston (Thor) as Loki, Cobie Smulders (TV's How I Met Your Mother) as Maria Hill, Clark Gregg (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor) as Phil Coulson, Stellan Skarsgard (Thor) as Erik Slevig, and Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man, Iron Man 2) as Pepper Potts. 

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had a chance to travel to the Industrial Light & Magic offices in San Francisco and sit down with Assoc. Visual Effects Supervisor Jason Smith to talk about his work creating the New York City fight scene in The Avengers. Smith discussed the film, creating a virtual New York, making the ambitious finale look real, the movie's fan-favorite "hero shot," collaborating with director Joss Whedon, and why The Avengers is a truly groundbreaking cinematic experience.  

Since he wrote and directed the third-biggest movie of all time to close out the first phase of Marvel's cinematic universe-building, Marvel Studios is doubling down on Joss Whedon for Phase Two.  While promoting a movie that he actually shot in the midst of making The Avengers, Whedon has commented on his involvement in the other upcoming Phase Two features and his thematic plans for The Avengers 2.

Our first look at footage from Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters has arrived in the form of an international trailer showcasing Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as the sibling duo familiar from the bit of German folklore that became a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end to summer, and it looks like Marvel Studios and Disney are looking to bookend the summer of 2012 with some hot and heavy The Avengers action.  Joss Whedon's mega-movie kicked off summer with the biggest domestic opening in movie history, and now it will close out the season by expanding back a whole lot more theaters nationwide for the Labor Day weekend.

Tumblr's about to break clean in half from an overload of gifs and feels, because the gag reel from The Avengers is floating around online.

Last week, the world rejoiced as Disney and Marvel Studios let it ring forth that Joss Whedon will indeed be writing and directing the sequel to this summer's crazy-successful The Avengers.  Now, the question of just when we'll be seeing The Avengers 2 has been answered.

Disney has officially announced a May 1, 2015 release date for the sequel.

For decades, conventional franchise wisdom upheld a rule of diminishing returns with each new installment in a series.  Nowadays, that doesn't hold quite the same, particularly in the case of summer blockbusters.  The Bourne movies starring Matt Damon as an amnesiac assassin, for example, got bigger every time out.  The Bourne Legacy, an attempt to continue the franchise without several seemingly indispensable element, has opened down from its predecessors, but respectably enough that we might see more of Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross.

A decade ago, when we first met amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne floating in a turbulent sea, Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity seemed an unlikely franchise-starter, and Matt Damon an unlikely action star.  In that film and the two that followed, however, Liman, Damon, and Paul Greengrass used Robert Ludlum's globe-trotting novels as a jumping-off point for a redefinition of cinematic espionage.

It's been five years Bourne swam off at the conclusion of The Bourne Ultimatum, but this Friday's sequel, The Bourne Legacy, continues the story, exploring the program the turned him into a world-class killer and the individuals impacted by his adventures.  Carrying on Bourne's legacy is Aaron Cross, played by two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner.  Like Bourne, Cross is a souped-up government assassin forced to go on the run from his former superiors, who are liquidating the illegal program after Bourne's public reveal of Treadstone in the last film.

Tony Gilroy, who contributed to all three previous films in the series as a writer, takes over as director on the new film.  IAR Managing Editor Jami Philbrick was on hand at the recent The Bourne Legacy Los Angeles press day, where Gilroy and Jeremy Renner were joined by co-writer Dan Gilroy and Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton, who play a scientist on the run with Cross and the film's villain, respectively.  The filmmakers shared their enthusiasm for this continuation of a popular story, discussing the concept, challenges, and ambiguities of The Bourne Legacy.

A new featurette for The Bourne Legacy was found floating in the ocean with no memory of itself a Swiss bank account number embedded under its skin today.  This behind the scenes nugget includes plenty of stuff from the film and implicitly argues as to why the audience should be psyched for a Bourne movie without Matt Damon.  It is also the first Bourne-related anything I've seen in years that didn't include characters gravely saying "Jason Bourne" roughly seventeen times every three seconds.

The second clip from The Bourne Legacy has arrived online, not much more than twenty-four hours after the first.  Yesterday's first clip from the sequel had Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz running from the authorities, with Renner's Aaron Cross showing some acrobatic skills in saving the lady from capture.  This new clip sticks to action, as Renner and Weisz fleeing the police on a motorbike.  This time, though, its not just the police, but a bad guy whose skills include hopping from one motorcycle to another.