Tired of seeing Jonathan Majors hamming it up in the MCU? Those days may be over sooner than his critics might have hoped, as Variety has shared a new cover story about what is apparently a “crisis at Marvel,” and in one section, there’s talk about how studio executives have already discussed backup plans for dropping Kang the Conquerer, Majors’ time-traveling villain, for another one of Marvel’s big bads: the one-and-only Dr. Doom, previously played by Julian McMahon in the older Fantastic Four films. It’s unclear whether this plan will actually come to pass, as Marvel could simply recast the character, but one top dealmaker has already opined that “Marvel is truly fucked with the whole Kang angle,” what with Majors continuing to draw bad press following his assault charges and arrest earlier this year, among other reasons, including the poor reception to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Variety’s article goes on to suggest that Marvel’s problems are only set to grow with The Marvels, a new Captain Marvel film that is expected to “underwhelm” at the box office, although there’s some potentially positive news at the very end, in that “Marvel has started talking to writers about bringing the X-Men into the MCU fold.” Hugh Jackman, who claimed he would never play Wolverine again, will return in Deadpool 3 as the character.
On Oct. 25, a New York judge denied Majors’ motion to dismiss the case, which ensures that the actor will stand trial in late November. His legal team is attempting to keep some material in the case sealed.
A studio source notes that regardless of the actor’s legal issues, Marvel already had considered moving away from a Majors-led phase because of the box office performance of “Quantumania,” which will struggle to make a profit. “It gave people pause given that ‘Quantumania’ didn’t exactly land,” the source says. (On Oct. 27, Disney removed another Majors film, Searchlight’s “Magazine Dreams,” from the release calendar.)
Recasting Majors is also an option, as Feige did when he replaced Terrence Howard in “Iron Man 2” with Don Cheadle.
This week’s Variety cover story:
— Variety (@Variety) November 1, 2023
Crisis at Marvel: Jonathan Majors Back-Up Plans, 'The Marvels' Reshoots, Reviving Original Avengers and More Issues Revealed https://t.co/9by5jJNncZ pic.twitter.com/e7UuvXFDpr
Discussion (9 replies)
Join Discussion →Well, they still have Kathleen Kennedy, so competence, quality work, and profit has nothing to do with being paid millions and keep the job. That said I don't know who that guy is nor do I care. Sick of superhero garbage, been sick of it a long time now.
They really need to worry about the heroes that have buy in.
I'll see a captain America, Iron Man, Thor, (Thoress,), Hawkeye, hulk, Loki, and a few others... what I don't really care about seeing are freaking ant man movies. I watched the first one and haven't seen another.
It's the same Schtick marvel used to do with comics that dethatched me from plot lines. Making it so you had to read ALL of their comic lines to follow the freaking story.
You want to get me in... on Disney + start offering story line content... Meaning... If a specific arc begins in Iron Man... flows through 6 other titles and wraps with a big story at the end. Give me the option of watching the movies in the order of the story on Disney +.
That MIGHT get me to watch titles I'm more 'meh' about. Right now it's like I need to go to some special website to figure out the order to watch movies/series to get the story I'm trying to digest. By that point it becomes effort and I stop caring.
The characters ain't the problem...
I'm not sure box off sales should be the number one metric anymore anyway. I don't see much of anything at the theater anymore, but I've still seen all the MCU movies on Disney+.
KK is only in charge of Lucasfilm, not Marvel, but her being around still is indicative of the leadership at Disney, or lack thereof.
I think there is no such thing as superhero fatigue, it's all just bad movie fatigue. If they dropped an MCU movie now that was actually brilliant, everybody would forget their superhero fatigue instantly.
I agree. The stories are there from the comics, but the end movie results aren't always the best.
I am so over all the comic book / superhero movies. Just let the trend die already.
Finished the last season of Loki. Saving the villain could be an awesome story arc.
This is stupid. It's pretty simple. Recast Kang. The actor isn't linked to the character the same way that say Robert Downey Jr. is linked to Iron Man where anyone they recast isn't likely to be accepted by fans.
No, the characters are fine though some are definitely more interesting than others. Captain Marvel is a good example of one that never really landed all that well. Going back to her early days, her comics never sold particularly well leading to relatively short runs of each series.
One way or another it comes back to chasing ESG scores for that Black Rock money. It also comes down to the infected corporate culture in Hollywood and big corporations like Disney. Essentially the loons are running the nut house now and that's going to be very difficult to change.
You can make some arguments for super hero fatigue and genre fatigue being factors and to some extent, I think those are real things that are setting in but its not really the core problem. The problem is themes and identity politics over story. It's messaging and evangelization of ideology over story. It's also quantity over quality as these things are being cranked out too quickly and the lack of quality versus previous offerings shows. There are problems at nearly every level in Hollywood.
Righting the ship isn't going to happen overnight. We'll be lucky if the ship can be righted in ten years.