‘Magazine Dreams’: Jonathan Majors’ bodybuilder goes down a dark path
Jonathan Majors plays a socially awkward bodybuilder seeking fame and heading down an increasingly dangerous path in the dark drama “Magazine Dreams.”
Jonathan Majors was on tap to rule the Marvel Cinematic Universe, until legal troubles ended his reign before it ever really got started.
Just over a month after his big-screen debut as Kang the Conqueror in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the actor’s rocket ride to stardom came crashing down when he was arrested in March 2023 after an alleged domestic violence altercation with then-girlfriend Grace Jabbari. Nine months later, a Manhattan jury found Majors guilty of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation, and Marvel fired him.
Since then, there’s been talk of Marvel recasting Kang with various actors, including Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, and Robert Downey Jr. signed on to play the villainous Doctor Doom who, like Kang, is a high-profile Avengers big bad from the comic books. (Last August, Majors told TMZ that he was “heartbroken” over the announcement.) But now, with the high-profile release of “Magazine Dreams” and Majors’ attempt at a Hollywood comeback, the actor told USA TODAY that he’d gladly return to Marvel if given the chance.
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“Disney, Marvel Studios, I love them,” Majors said during an emotional interview. “Tom Hiddleston, loved working with that guy. Loved working with Paul Rudd. Loved working with Gugu Mbatha-Raw. I love the industry so much, and now I’m in the place where I can feel the love from them and actually express my love for them.”
Majors realizes that his Hollywood career is a little out of his control right now. All he can do now is “dream and hope and put a plan in place,” he says, and he’s “putting things together in a way that, in this next chapter, I am the best version of myself, not just playing a really cool character in a really cool way.”
Opposite Hiddleston, Majors first introduced a variant of Kang, a character with multiple versions in the Marvel multiverse, in 2021’s first-season finale of Marvel’s Disney+ series “Loki.” (He also appeared as a different variant in the second season, which streamed in the fall 2023, after his arrest but before the start of his trial.) Kang made his first big foray into the MCU courtesy of “Quantumania,” with Majors appearing as multiple variants in a teasing post-credits sequence. He was set to play a huge role in the fifth “Avengers” film, subtitled “The Kang Dynasty,” though after the actor’s dismissal it was renamed “Avengers: Doomsday.”
Kang appealed to Majors in various projects because he was “the most solid thing” in a heightened landscape, he said in February 2023. “We all, as human beings, know what it is to want something so badly. We also know what it is to fail. We also know what it is wear our failure or when we hide our failure,” Majors adds. “How do we make this guy flesh and blood? You may not like him, or you may, but you can hold onto him, and that’s what’s important, especially as we move forward.”
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