Marvel Studios Fires Jonathan Majors Following Assault Conviction
The actor was on a meteoric rise as Kang the Conqueror, the focal point of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse Saga
It’s official. Marvel Studios has fired actor Jonathan Majors after he was convicted Monday of two misdemeanor counts of harassment and assault of ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari. Majors played the powerful Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and his variants, most prominently Victor Timely and He Who Remains on Loki, among thousands across the multiverse as seen in a Quantumania post-credits scene. Kang was poised to be the big bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Multiverse Saga, starring in 2026’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
The verdict, which did include being found not guilty of one count of intentional assault in the third degree and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree, closes a domestic violence case that began on March 25 with Majors’s arrest on these charges, with the assaults in a car leading to her sustaining injuries which he of course denied. The two week trial revealed damning manipulative texts that established a pattern of abuse by Majors.
Since the Creed III star’s arrest, Majors’s talent manager, Entertainment 360, and his publicity firm, the Lede Company both dropped him as a client. He’s also no longer involved with the film The Man in My Basement from Protagonist Pictures. Ads featuring him from the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers baseball team have been pulled. Several other projects involving Majors, including Spike Lee’s Da Understudy for Amazon and Dennis Rodman’s 48 Hours in Vegas for Lionsgate, remain in limbo. Searchlight Pictures’s Magazine Dreams, which was already garnering acclaim for Majors on the festival circuit, earning it its distribution pickup, was removed from the release calendar in October, and has yet to be rescheduled. Majors first gained attention with The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and would go on to star in other films and series as Lovecraft Country, The Harder They Fall and Da 5 Bloods.
As far as a next step for Marvel Studios, the months after Majors’s arrest saw studio executives, including head Kevin Feige, discuss the likelihood they’d have to move away from Kang to another major villain. Recasting is of course still in play among the major decisions they’d have to face, however reportedly they’re going for the former. Filming for what may or may not still be known as The Kang Dynasty was set to commence in January. That is, with the film still in the script phase, with the duties now belonging to Michael Waldron and no director, as Destin Daniel Cretton relinquished it in favor of his other MCU projects. At this point it is still scheduled to be released on May 1, 2026, though it’s unclear if it encompasses both it and Secret Wars like Infinity War and Endgame. That date was originally Secret Wars’s before delays in the summer brought on by the studios being stubborn with the talent, and the fifth film had what is now Fantastic Four’s May 2, 2025 date.
Sentencing is scheduled for February 6, where he could face up to a year in prison for the assault conviction. The harassment violation could add 15 extra days to it, along with a $250 fine.
Source: Variety