Marvel Studios Officially Cut Jonathan Majors Following Guilty Verdict In Domestic Assault Case, Rename ‘Avengers: The Kang Dynasty’ To ‘Avengers 5’
And just like that, Jonathan Majors’ time as the big-bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes to an end, as following his being found guilty of assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, Disney has officially that the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Loki star will no longer have a place at the House of Mouse.
This decision was first revealed to Deadline by a studio rep on the afternoon of December 18th, shortly after Majors received his guilty verdict.
As for the fate of Majors’ character, Kang the Conqueror, and his role as both the main antagonist and connective tissue of Marvel Studios’ ‘Multiverse Saga’, Disney has yet to officially confirm their story plans following the actor’s firing.
In November, The Ringer’s Joanna Robinson – who readers may better know as one of the ‘super fan’ authors of the retrospective book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios – claimed that despite keeping tight-lipped on the matter to the public, Disney had already decided to respond to Majors’ legal troubles by moving away from their Kang-related plans entirely.
“I actually heard from someone recently – so, the screenwriter Jeff Loveness, who wrote [Ant-Man and the Wasp:] Quantumania was supposed to write Kang Dynasty, I had it confirmed to me that he is no longer working for Marvel,” Robinson told her co-host, Mallory Rubin, during the November 11th episode of The Ringer’s House of R podcast [Time Stamp: 2:52:10].
“I asked the person why,” she further explained,“and they said the reason why is that he was all wrapped up in this Kang storyline and that they are likely going to be moving away from that.”
“So no official announcement that Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will now be called ‘Doom’s Dystopia’ or whatever,” Robinson concluded of her scoop. “We don’t know exactly what they’re going to do, to be clear, but I think that this just gives them the perfect opportunity to just be done [with the Majors situation] if they want to be.”
From there, Deadline would report just a few days later that Avengers: The Kang Dynasty‘s director, Destin Daniel Cretton, who previously helmed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for the studio, had voluntarily stepped away from the film’s director chair in order to “focus on his other Marvel projects”, including the Wonder Man Disney Plus series and a second adventure for the Master of Kung-Fu.
However, while these two updates suggested that the MCU would be angling to abandon the story and character of Kang all together, in seemingly recommitting to their original plans, a last minute move at the end of the month would see Marvel officially tap Loki creator and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer to pen Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
But, in seeming confirmation of the speculation that Marvel had already chosen to move on from both Majors and Kang long before the verdict, sources would inform The Hollywood Reporter that in the wake of Majors’ conviction, Disney had officially dropped the Avengers: The Kang Dynasty‘s villainous branding, leaving the film to now be referred to as simply Avengers 5.
To this end, it’s currently unknown just how Marvel hopes to salvage their franchise’s current direction given this major – no pun intended – casting shake-up, including whether or not their solution will, as noted by Robinson, feature the involvement of Doctor Doom.
All in all, at current, the only confirmed fact is that Majors will make no further appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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