A year ago, Jonathan Majors embarked on a 29-hour drive from his home in New York City to Park City, Utah, where he unveiled the body building drama Magazine Dreams to rapturous reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the start of what was supposed to be a banner year, which was to include blockbuster roles and an awards season campaign for Magazine Dreams.
That dream has been put on hold as the actor awaits a Feb. 6 sentencing for assault and harassment convictions following a March 2023 incident involving ex-partner Grace Jabbari.
The career fallout for Majors has been severe, with Disney-owned Marvel Studios dropping him as chief villain Kang the Conqueror hours after his conviction. And the fate of Magazine Dreams is still in the balance at esteemed specialty studio Searchlight, also owned by Disney.
Searchlight, home of numerous Oscar best picture winners, acquired Magazine Dreams after Sundance in February 2023. The studio gave the film an awards-friendly December release date, but pulled it from the calendar in October in the leadup to Majors’ trial.
Now, a release by Searchlight is looking more and more unlikely.
Officially, Searchlight is maintaining radio silence on the project’s fate. Unofficially, sources close to the project do not see a scenario in which Searchlight opens the movie on the big screen, or even on Disney’s more adult-skewing streaming service Hulu as some have speculated. Marketing the film would likely be problematic, because of its themes of personal violence.
Yet others are confident the film will still see the light of day elsewhere. It is possible Searchlight could decide to return Magazine Dreams to the filmmakers, who could shop the film to other buyers. Jennifer Fox, Dan Gilroy, Jeffrey Soros and Simon Horsman produced the feature, with Majors among the executive producers.
Magazine Dreams hails from writer-director Elijah Bynum, who first penned it as a tale of isolation and alienation during the early days of the pandemic. He put the script aside for a year before one day seeing Majors’ face on a Los Angeles city bus and becoming inspired to rewrite it for the actor specifically. The movie stars Majors as Killian Maddox, an amateur body builder who battles personal demons.
Majors trained for 18 months to transform himself physically for the role, which critics have compared to Robert De Niro’s work as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. The film shot for 24 days around L.A. and ultimately landed the creative vision jury prize at Sundance.
“It’s an all-in performance for the ages, layered with as much vulnerability as anger, and it’s to Majors’ credit that our hearts ache for Killian even — or perhaps especially — when he’s out of control,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter chief film critic David Rooney out of Sundance. “Majors and writer-director Elijah Bynum manage the considerable feat of making us fear more for the intimidating colossus than the quivering employer he’s standing over.”
After Searchlight acquired the film, for under the $10 million range, sources say the plan was for Bynum to fine tune a cut of the feature for its theatrical release, though it’s unclear if work commenced on this new cut. What is clear: Sundance already felt like a soft launch for a Majors’ Oscar campaign.
“It would have 100 percent been in the awards conversation” had it not been for Majors’ legal troubles, says one source in the orbit of the film.
As for Majors, he is attempting to reframe his public image and perhaps save his career. In an unusual move for someone awaiting sentencing, he granted a broadcast interview that has been airing this week on ABC. Asked by ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis if he believed he would work in Hollywood again, he stated: “Yeah. I do. I pray I do.”
—Borys Kit contributed to this story.
