After being taken off the schedule due to Jonathan Majors’ legal issues, Searchlight Pictures has now officially dropped plans to release Magazine Dreams, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
What’s Happening:
- Almost a year following Searchlight Pictures’ acquisition of the Jonathan Majors-starring bodybuilding drama, the studio has returned the rights to Magazine Dreams to the filmmakers.
- Searchlight delivered the news to the Magazine Dreams team late last week that it would not be releasing the film, according to sources.
- The film will now be shopped to other potential buyers.
- This decision comes after Majors was convicted of assault and harassment of ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, and was then promptly fired by Marvel, where he starred as Kang the Conqueror and He Who Remains in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Loki, respectively.
- Magazine Dreams debuted to much fanfare at Sundance in January 2023, and was brought up by Searchlight in February.
- “It would have 100 percent been in the awards conversation” had it not been for Majors’ legal troubles, a source told The Hollywood Reporter.
- The film was scheduled for December 2023 release, but was pulled from the calendar in October due to Majors’ legal issues.
- After Searchlight acquired the film, the plan was reportedly for director Elijah Bynum to fine tune a cut of the feature for its theatrical release, though it’s unclear if work commenced on this new cut.
- Jennifer Fox, Dan Gilroy, Jeffrey Soros and Simon Horsman produced the feature.