It's Time for Marvel to Drop Jonathan Majors

Back on March 25, actor Jonathan Majors was arrested in Manhattan and charged with assault, strangulation and harassment. According to an NYPD spokesperson, a 30-year-old woman told police she had been assaulted by Majors and “sustained minor injuries to her head and neck and was removed to an area hospital in stable condition.”

Since then, the actor has been dropped by his publicist and his manager, and according to a new report from Variety, it sounds like things are about to get worse for him.

“Sources familiar with the matter tell Variety that multiple alleged abuse victims of Majors have come forward following his March arrest and are cooperating with the Manhattan district attorney’s office,” the publication writes. “The prospect of more women waiting in the wings would mark a dramatic turn in the case and comes on the heels of Majors’ publicists and management firm cutting ties with the embattled actor earlier this week.”

Majors, through his attorney, has vehemently denied the allegation and intends to fight the charges. “Jonathan Majors is innocent and has not abused anyone. We have provided irrefutable evidence to the District Attorney that the charges are false. We are confident that he will be fully exonerated,” his attorney Priya Chaudhry in a statement.

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But while many are scrambling to distance themselves from the actor, Marvel (and parent company Disney) have remained silent about the charges against one of their most promising stars. As of now, Majors is still atttached to play the titular Kang in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which is slated to be released on May 2, 2025. Production is scheduled to begin on the film in spring 2024, and Majors will reportedly receive $20 million including back-end compensation for his work on the project. He also was scheduled to star in Avengers: Secret Wars, which will come out in 2026.

These projects are far away enough that there’s plenty of time for Marvel to recast the role or rework the storylines to write him out of them. That’ll take time and money, of course — as Kang, Majors was set to be the superhero series’ next big villain — but it’s doable, considering The Kang Dynasty doesn’t even start filming for another year. Marvel is clearly hoping this will all go away somehow so that they don’t have to scrap or delay a movie that they’re likely spending hundreds of millions of dollars on, but with more women coming forward to accuse Majors of abuse, it’s clear this is only going to get worse. The time to cut ties with him and move forward is now.

Outside of Marvel, Disney already has some Majors projects in the can that they’ll need to figure out what to do with as well. As Variety notes, “Its specialty label Searchlight acquired the actor’s critically lauded drama Magazine Dreams, in which he plays a troubled body builder, at the Sundance Film Festival and was prepared to mount a robust best actor awards campaign later this year when it releases the film on Dec. 8. Majors already shot the second season of the Disney+ series Loki, which is expected to launch on the streaming platform in mid-2023.”

The longer they wait to pull the plug, the worse it’s going to look. Who wants to watch someone as a violent, ‘roided-out body builder when they know that he’s likely committed terrible acts of violence in real life?