'Truly F***ed': Insider Says Marvel Star's Legal Troubles Have Disney Headed Toward Disaster
The sizzling career of Jonathan Majors, a rising star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe who was being groomed to helm a new film franchise, is imploding amid domestic violence allegations.
The legal troubles could be a catastrophic drag on Marvel, which is in crisis mode as executives ponder a major pivot to accommodate the mushrooming scandal, Variety reported Wednesday.
Majors was being positioned to play supervillain Kang the Conqueror in a fifth “Avengers” film.
The 34-year-old actor played Kang in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which came out in theaters earlier this year.
He also reprised the role in Season 2 of the Disney+ series “Loki.”
Kang was supposed to be the main villain in several forthcoming MCU films over the next few years. Now those plans appear to be going up in smoke, just like the actor’s career.
“Marvel is truly f***ed with the whole Kang angle,” one insider told Variety. “And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the Writers Guild of America strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.”
The scandal erupted in March when Majors was arrested in New York after being accused of hitting and choking his then-girlfriend.
In April, the ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, was granted a restraining order against the actor.
Several other women have since come forward to accuse the actor of abuse, Rolling Stone reported in June.
“The actor insists he is the victim, but the damage to his reputation and the chance he could lose the case has forced Marvel to reconsider its plans to center the next phase of its interlocking slate of sequels, spinoffs and series around Majors’ villainous character, Kang the Conqueror,” Variety’s Tatiana Siegel wrote.
“At the gathering in Palm Springs, executives discussed backup plans, including pivoting to another comic book adversary, like Dr. Doom,” she said, referring to the studio’s September retreat in the California resort city.
This latest scandal is a disaster for Marvel, which is in damage-control mode.
Image is important because Marvel is owned by “woke” mega-corporation Disney, which bills itself as a purveyor of family entertainment.
Woke Hollywood destroyed it. Period.
— WolverineCC (@WolverineCC73) November 1, 2023
Extricating the Kang character from the numerous projects in which he’s interwoven has been all the more difficult because of the four-month Hollywood writers’ strike, which ended in late September.
Wall Street analyst Eric Handler, who covers Disney, said this incident spotlights the importance of maintaining brand quality control.
He suggested the studio’s rabid push to churn out content at a frenetic pace induced “superhero fatigue” among fans.
“The Marvel machine was pumping out a lot of content. Did it get to the point where there was just too much, and they were burning people out on superheroes? It’s possible,” Handler told Variety.
“The more you do, the tougher it is to maintain quality,” he said.
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