The legal and PR problems surrounding Marvel star Jonathan Majors—who was arrested, back on March 25, on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment, in relation to an alleged incident of domestic abuse—seem like they’re only about to get even thornier. This is per Variety, which reports that “multiple alleged abuse victims of Majors” have come forward since the incident, and are now cooperating with the Manhattan district’s attorney office.
News of this development comes as numerous organizations associated with Majors continue to back away from him, or at least exhibit extreme caution; his publicists and management teams both cut ties with him earlier this week (although his agency, WME, has reportedly yet to make a similar call), and multiple projects that he’s associated with, including the upcoming movie The Man In My Basement, an ad campaign with the Texas Rangers baseball team, and a biopic of Otis Redding, have all cut ties.
The elephant in the room is, of course, Marvel, which has invested heavily in Majors, and which has so far been entirely silent on this topic. Not only is Majors’ Kang at the center of the company’s plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including a starring role in the already-shot second season of Loki; Fox Searchlight also shelled out big bucks for his critically lauded festival darling Magazine Dreams. The Variety piece outright quotes one industry insider as saying most people in Hollywood are waiting to see “what Marvel will do.” (The company has been comfortable enough re-casting parts in the past, most notably replacing Ed Norton as The Hulk and Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes—but never in quite so prominent a way as removing Majors would be, no matter how much they try to contextualize it with time shenanigans).
If nothing else, the new Variety story about the “multiple alleged abuse victims” suggests that this issue is not going to resolve itself in a quick fashion. (Per Deadline, Majors’ lawyer has issued a statement tonight asserting that, “Jonathan Majors is innocent and has not abused anyone” and stating their confidence that “he will be fully exonerated.”) Even so: it’s becoming readily apparently that Disney PR now has on its hands not just a “Jonathan Majors issue,” but a “Jonathan Majors problem”—and at some point, it’s going to have to be addressed.