Source: collider.com/ Chris McPherson
The actor’s partnership with Disney and Marvel has been terminated due to his legal issues.
The actor Jonathan Majors has been dropped at Disney and Marvel as a result of his ongoing legal issues, following his arrest earlier this year on domestic battery charges against his partner, confirms THR. Majors was taken into custody by the New York Police Department in March 2023, following a response to a 911 call from a Manhattan apartment.
Following a two-week trial, on December 18, the actor was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of harassment and assault and acquitted of one count of intentional assault in the third degree and aggravated harassment in the second degree.
Disney and Marvel still intend to move forward with their upcoming slate of films, but it appears that it will be undergoing a serious overhaul with Loki writer Michael Waldron recently hired to pen a new draft.
PR firm The Lede Company and Majors’ managers at Entertainment 360 have also dropped the actor. Marvel will likely recast the role, however, no official announcement has been made at this time.
Majors, at the time, was appearing in both Creed III and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In Quantumania, he plays the role of Kang the Conqueror, which he was expected to reprise in future installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Season Two of the Disney+ series, Loki.
Majors went on to play the role of Victor Timely in Loki, with his character playing a pivotal role in the outcome of the series. He had also appeared in advertisements, working with the United States Army, all of which were swiftly withdrawn in the wake of the allegations and subsequent charge.
The fifth Avengers film, Marvel’s tentpole series, was set to feature Majors’ character at its heart, with the film having been titled The Kang Dynasty.
The termination, while not entirely unexpected, does put Marvel and Disney in something of a tight spot. Speaking on The Ringer’s The Big Picture podcast, writer and author of the book, MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, Joanna Robinson had previously claimed that, during the process of putting together her work, she had learned the intentions of Marvel’s creative team had never been to make Kang the center of the MCU, but that Majors’ performance changed everybody’s minds once they saw previews of his work in Quantumania.
Robinson, a senior writer for Vanity Fair, who has written many Marvel articles exclusively over a number of years for the magazine, spoke in great detail about how Majors gave them a creative change of approach — that is, until the domestic battery charges.
The question for Marvel and Disney is now — how quickly can they get a replacement? For Majors, the issues are much more severe. You can read more about the case here.