What are Disney/Searchlight doing with the Jonathan Majors- starring “Magazine Dreams”? It’s less than two months away from release and no promotional material has been released.
Searchlight Pictures actually won a bidding war for “Magazine Dreams”, which was acquired out of Sundance and given an awards-ready December 8, 2023 release date. No doubt, Majors was going to be Searchlight’s big Oscar push for Best Actor.
Now that Majors is currently embroiled with assault charges in New York, his career and the film itself are in a state of limbo. “Magazine Dreams” has this great performance from Majors, as an intensely deranged bodybuilder, and he was supposed to contend for an Oscar nomination.
An insider tells me that Searchlight is waiting for the next court date on October 25th. The case isn’t a slam dunk for the prosecution, charges against Majors might actually be dropped.
Even the best case scenario, Majors leaving this mess unscathed and with no jail time, still doesn’t mean that the actor will be staying put in the MCU as Kang the Conquerer — he’s supposed to play the main villain in “Avengers: Secret Wars.”
As for “Magazine Dreams,” it’ll get released, maybe dumped, in fact. Maybe it’ll go straight to HULU, but it will be made available. Searchlight dished out a lot of money for this one and there’s no reason to think they won’t make it available to all the curiosity seekers out there.
Majors was arrested on March 26th and charged with assault and harassment in an alleged domestic dispute with his female partner. He was one of the industry’s rising stars and the most exciting recent addition to the MCU.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.