I don't buy a lot of Blu-rays anymore, so it takes something special to coax the dollars out of my pocket. The latest thing to intrigue me was the Marvel Universe Phase One box set, which included all the Marvel movies up to The Avengers. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor Blus (as well as The Avengers) were to come in a suitcase box designed to look like the one that holds the Tesseract in the movies. It was set to come out this month.
But it turns out that Marvel never got the rights to the copyrighted suitcase design. The release was delayed indefinitely until something could be hashed out. It seems that nothing was hashed out, and the suitcase design is kaput, with the whole release being delayed until Spring 2013.
This is a pretty big bummer, but it turns out that all pre-orders will still be honored. So if you pre-ordered you won't be getting the suitcase, but you'll be getting the set in something else. A Tesseract cube design?
What I wonder is how much this is costing. I have to believe that Marvel was already fabricating the suitcases - even if they were cardboard (and knowing these guys, probably), that's a penny or two. On top of that this is a loss of sales; people who were buying this set were not going to buy The Avengers on Blu separately. Will pre-ordering types buy an Avengers Blu to tide them over for five or six months? I know I won't.
About the Author: A ten year veteran of writing for the web, Devin has built a reputation as a loud, uncompromising and honest voice – sometimes to the chagrin of his readers, but usually to their delight.
