Jonathan Majors reportedly dropped by manager, publicist

19 Apr 2023

Jonathan Majors’ management and public relations firms, several film projects and an advertisement campaign reportedly have dropped the actor amid his ongoing criminal case in New York.

The rising star of “Lovecraft Country” and “Creed III” was a longtime client of talent management company Entertainment 360 and PR firm the Lede Company before being dropped in recent days, according to Deadline, which cited sources close to the matter on Tuesday.

Entertainment 360 declined to comment when contacted by The Times; the Lede Company did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.

Also on Tuesday, Deadline reported that Majors had been released from a number of projects, including a feature film adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel “The Man in My Basement,” an unannounced Otis Redding biopic and an ad campaign for Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers. Majors grew up in Dallas, a 30-minute drive from the Arlington-based Rangers.

Representatives for the Rangers and Protagonist Pictures, which is producing “The Man in My Basement,” did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In late March, police arrested Majors at a New York City apartment after a 30-year-old woman told police she was assaulted during a “domestic dispute.” The woman was hospitalized with minor injuries to her head and neck.

The next day Majors was arraigned on misdemeanor assault and harassment charges. The criminal complaint filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alleged the actor did “strike her about the face with an open hand, causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear.” A judge ordered Majors released on his own recognizance with a limited order of protection. May 8 was set as his next court date.

Majors’ attorney, Priya Chaudhry, continues to maintain her client’s innocence and previously told The Times that her team had obtained “two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations.”

Chaudhry said Majors is “provably the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows.” In a statement released shortly after the arrest, Chaudhry claimed that the woman “was having an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to the hospital,” and that Majors “did not assault her whatsoever.”

Majors’ legal team was gathering evidence — including video footage from “the vehicle where this episode took place” and testimony from witnesses — to give to prosecutors and expected the charges to be dropped.

Even so, Majors has already faced public scrutiny around the allegations. The United States military pulled a pair of Army advertisements featuring the action hero. A representative for the U.S. Armed Forces told The Times in a statement that the Army was “deeply concerned” about the allegations.

The arrest and charges came amid a high point in Majors’ career. He had recently starred in blockbusters “Creed III” and Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” as well as indie psychological thriller “Magazine Dreams,” which was met with praise upon its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. During the press tours for these films, Majors won fans over with his vulnerable take on masculinity, while still presenting as a sex symbol with magazine cover shoots for outlets including Men’s Health and Ebony.

As Kang the Conqueror in “Quantumania,” he was heralded as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest mega-villain and has, according to Deadline, already filmed his parts in the second season of the Disney+ show “Loki.”

The status of Majors’ involvement in the upcoming film “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,” in which he is expected to play a lead role, was not immediately known ahead of its 2025 release.

Times staff writers Christi Carras and Alexandra Del Rosario and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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