Disney Has a Majors Problems and No Good Way Out of It

The Walt Disney Company has a problem. To be more precise, The Walt Disney Company has several issues, but let’s just focus on one of them for now. That problem is Marvel Studios. Before the pandemic, putting out a Marvel film was a license to print money. So far, 10 Marvel films have made over $1 billion at the box office, including the $2.8 billion Avengers: End Game (2019). But like so much else since the end of the pandemic, Marvel movies just aren’t the same as they used to be.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that fixing Marvel is his “top priority,” but that may not be as easy as it sounds. In 2023, Marvel Studios released three films. There was the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with the good. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 (2023) made a respectable $845 million at the box office, sending the Guardians off on a high note. But that was the only good news this year for Marvel.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) lost an estimated $125 million at the box office as critics and fans panned the movie for terrible CGI effects. And then there is The Marvels (2023). The Marvels had the lowest opening weekend and largest second-weekend drop in the history of the Disney/Marvel partnership. The box office results were so bad that Disney stopped reporting them.

Things have gotten so bad for Marvel that Iger has decided to delay some of its upcoming films. In 2024, Marvel will only release one film, Deadpool 3. Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel’s Thunderbolts, and Blade were all pushed back to 2025.

But Disney and Marvel have a more significant issue they haven’t even begun addressing: Jonathan Majors. Majors played Kang the Conqueror in Loki Season 1 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Jonathan Majors is also facing domestic battery and assault charges in New York, with his trial starting this week. Majors is accused of allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, in March.

During the trial this week, testimony revealed that Majors had texted Jabbari after an earlier incident, telling her not to head to the hospital as that would “lead to an investigation.” Majors has maintained his innocence. 

Thus far, Disney has stuck by Jonathan Majors, but it really has no choice. Majors is set to play the villain in the next two Avengers films, and Marvel has built the next generation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe around Majors Kang. But if Majors is found guilty, there is no way that Disney’s family-friendly brand will stand with a domestic abuser.

Marvel now has some serious decisions to make. It can either rewrite the next face of the MCU without Kang the Conqueror as the main villain, but that storyline has already started to take shape, or Marvel Studios can replace Jonathan Majors with another actor. Neither option is great.

And Disney also needs to find a new director. Destin Daniel Cretton quit as Avengers: Kang Dynasty director, but Loki creator Michael Waldron is set to write the movie, which is slated for release in 2026.

Disney has already removed the Majors’ film, Magazine Dreams, from its slate of upcoming releases, which could be a sign of things to come. But as Bob Iger tries to fix Marvel, losing your main villain isn’t a good start, but what choice does Disney have?

The original Avengers aren’t returning to save the day for Marvel Studios. Do Marvel executives stick with someone accused of domestic violence or simply move on from Jonathan Majors Kang? Iger is learning that fixing something isn’t necessarily that easy.

We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.