On 18 December, a jury in Manhattan, New York found Kang actor Jonathan Majors guilty of third-degree reckless assault and harassment during a reported domestic dispute with the British dancer and Mayors’ ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari.
A six-person jury deliberated for more than four hours over the course of three days before returning a verdict and the actor will be given a sentence on 6 February. Marvel Studios officially removed Majors from his role in their upcoming films shortly after the decision was made.
Prior to his arrest in March, Majors was the new overarching villain after Thanos, kicking off the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Disney-owned company centered its current storyline around Majors’ character, Kang the Conqueror, who appeared in both seasons of Loki and in this year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
The time-traveling antagonist, seen in three different variants: The Conqueror, He Who Remains and Victor Timely, was set to take the lead in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty on 1 May, 2026. Filming has not started on the project yet as it is still in the writing stage and therefore is without a director.
Marvel currently has two options: It might recast the character, but it’s unclear how many actors would be drawn to a position where their predecessor was fired so openly. The alternative is to revise its strategy and concentrate on a whole new antagonist, which might have been already initiated.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, sources claim that Marvel enlisted Michael Waldron, the creator of Loki, in November to begin work on a revised version of the project once known as Kang Dynasty but now only known as Avengers 5.
The Jonathan Majors Allegations
Ever since the arrest of the Primetime Emmy Award nominee in March 2023, new allegations of abuse and domestic violence continued to surface against Jonathan Majors leading up to his trial which began on 29 November.
The Rolling Stone magazine published a report on 29 June 2023, which collected accounts of two dozen sources on Mayors’ decade-long pattern of abuse, toxicity and aggression. It traced his previous relationships in which he was allegedly controlling, manipulative, and in some cases physically abusive, along with his aggressive nature on movie sets and his “toxicity” during his graduation at Yale University.
Majors had previously made a motion to dismiss the case against him, however in response to it, a 115-page filing was issued which contained new details about the night on which Majors allegedly assaulted Grace.
The New York District Attorney’s Office, which was in charge of the case, also accused the defense on one occasion of falsifying a witness statement, which the office said never actually existed.
Major Hit on Acting Career
After his arrest in March, two directors, A.B. Allen and Tim Nicolai spoke publicly about Majors’ professional career and personal life, where the first pointed out his “vicious, cruel” behavior, and the later called Majors “a sociopath and abuser”. In April, Variety magazine reported that “multiple alleged abuse victims” had also come forward in the wake of the arrest to work with the district attorney’s office against the actor.
The allegations and subsequent arrest led to a huge public outcry on social media, which also took a major hit on the Creed III actor’s professional career. On 17 April, Deadline magazine reported that Majors’ manager, Entertainment 360 and his publicist, The Lede Company, had cut ties with the actor.
Majors was also dropped from several projects like the adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel – ‘The Man in My Basement’, an ad campaign for the Texas Rangers MLB team, as well as from an unannounced biopic on American singer-songwriter Otis Redding.
Following Majors’ arrest, the release of Magazine Dreams, an upcoming film that was being hailed as a potential Oscar candidate, was delayed, while the US Army backed away from a significant promotional campaign featuring the actor.
