Marvel drops actor Majors after conviction for assault
Actor Jonathan Majors, a rising Hollywood star who had been set to play the leading role in a Marvel superhero film, was found guilty by a New York jury on charges he attacked his former girlfriend in the back of a car.
Walt Disney-owned Marvel said the studio had dropped the actor from future projects.
Majors portrayed villain Kang the Conqueror in this year’s Ant-Man film and was expected to play the lead in 2026 release Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
He had been charged with two counts of assault and two of harassment, all misdemeanours.
The jury of six convicted him on one count of assault and one count of harassment, and acquitted him of the other charges.
Majors, dressed in a grey suit, stood and faced the jury as the verdict was read. He pursed his lips and cast his face down when the first conviction was read but otherwise showed little reaction.
Majors, 34, will be sentenced on February 6. He faces up to a year in prison, but prosecutors have not indicated what sentence they plan to seek.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office hailed the verdict, saying the evidence showed a “cycle of psychological and emotional abuse, and escalating patterns of coercion” by Majors.
Prosecutors said Majors assaulted his then-girlfriend Grace Jabbari in a hired car in Manhattan in March, leaving her with a broken finger and swollen arm and ear.
Jabbari said Majors attacked her after she grabbed his phone on seeing a text from another woman. She also described his “violent temper” and incidents where he “exploded” in anger.
“She had shaped herself around the defendant, to cater to his personality, to avoid him being angry with her,” prosecutor Kelli Galaway said.
Majors starred in the 2019 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco before landing top billing in Creed III and appearing in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.