Jonathan Majors
John Nacion/Getty Images
A year ago, Jonathan Majors made a 29-hour drive from his home in New York City to Park City, Utah, where he premiered the bodybuilding drama “Magazine Dreams” at the Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews. It was the start of what was supposed to be a banner year that would include blockbuster roles and an awards campaign for Magazine Dreams.
That dream has been put on hold as the actor awaits sentencing on February 6 for assault and harassment following an incident with ex-partner Grace Jabbari in March 2023.
The career implications for Majors were severe as Disney-owned Marvel Studios dropped him as chief villain Kang the Conqueror just hours after his conviction. And the fate of Magazine Dreams is still uncertain at the respected specialist studio Searchlight, which is also part of Disney.
Searchlight, home to numerous Best Picture Oscar 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 ahead of the majors trial.
Now publication by Searchlight is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Officially, Searchlight remains silent about the fate of the project. Unofficially, sources close to the project do not see a scenario in which Searchlight launches the film on the big screen or even on Disney's more adult-oriented streaming service Hulu, as some have speculated. Marketing the film would probably be problematic because it deals with personal violence.
Still others are confident that the film will see the light of day elsewhere. It's possible that Searchlight decides to return Magazine Dreams to the filmmakers, who could sell the film to other buyers. Jennifer Fox, Dan Gilroy, Jeffrey Soros and Simon Horsman produced the feature, with Majors serving as an executive producer.
“Magazine Dreams” comes from writer-director Elijah Bynum, who initially crafted it as a story of isolation and alienation in the early days of the pandemic. He put the script aside for a year before one day he saw Major's face on a Los Angeles city bus and was inspired to rewrite it specifically for the actor. In the film, Majors plays Killian Maddox, an amateur bodybuilder battling personal demons.
Majors trained for 18 months to get physically ready for the role, which critics compared to Robert De Niro's work as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. The film was shot in LA for 24 days and ultimately won the Jury Prize for Creative Vision at Sundance.
“It's a complete performance for the ages, with as much vulnerability as anger, and it's to the Majors' credit that our hearts ache for Killian, even – or perhaps especially – when he's out of control,” he wrote Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney's featured film from Sundance. “The majors and writer-director Elijah Bynum achieve the remarkable feat of making us more afraid of the intimidating juggernaut than of the trembling employer he faces.”
After Searchlight acquired the film for less than $2 million, sources say the plan was for Bynum to fine-tune a cut of the feature for its theatrical release. However, it is unclear whether work has begun on this new cut. What's clear: Sundance already felt like a soft start to the majors' Oscar campaign.
“It would have 100 percent been in the awards conversation” if Majors hadn't had legal problems, says a source close to the film.
As for the majors, he's trying to reshape his public image and perhaps salvage his career. In an unusual move for someone awaiting sentencing, he granted a radio interview that aired on ABC this week. When asked by ABC News Live “Prime” host Linsey Davis if he thought he would work in Hollywood again, he replied: “Yes. I do. I pray I do.”
—Borys Kit contributed to this story.
An earlier version of this story misstated the retail price for Magazine Dreams.