Latest news with #MagazineDreams'
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Encampments' Documentary On Gaza War Protests At Columbia University Sets Milestone For New Indie Label
has turned out looks like the highest per-screen average opening for a documentary with an anticipated $80k+ and sold-out screenings at an exclusive run at the Angelika Film Center in New York. It's a major step for indie distributor Watermelon Pictures, a new label, which had moved up the doc's release given the timeliness of its subject matter. It follows students at Columbia University who in 2024 launched a movement protesting the war in Gaza. The film features detained activist Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student active in the demonstrations who also served as a spokesperson for the group with the University. He was arrested by ICE agents on March 8 and has been held in a detention center in Louisiana, where he faces deportation amid a legal fight over where his case should be heard. More from Deadline Limited Releases Rule In Eclectic Indie Weekend From Focus, Bleecker Street, Mubi, More - Specialty Preview 'Magazine Dreams' Fails To Flex, 'October 8' A Standout With 'Secret Mall Apartment' - Specialty Box Office Beethoven's 'Fidelio' Live From The Met Sings On A Quiet Weekend, With 'October 8', 'No Other Land' - Specialty Box Office 'This film matters, and people are ready for it. It confirms our decision to fast-track the release — we knew the urgency was there, and we knew the demand was real,' said Justin DiPietro, EVP of Watermelon Pictures' parent, MPI Media Group. The top documentary performance over the last decade was 2018's , which took in $300.8k on four screens, or about $74k per theater. 'This landmark opening is also a testament to our incredible grassroots effort and the powerful social push we built,' DiPietro added. 'Along with Executive Producer Macklemore, we brought this story to the people, and the people showed up.' The Encampments expands to Los Angeles and other top markets next Friday. Documentary October 8 from Briarcliff Entertainment, which explores the surge in U.S. anti-semitism, including on college campuses, after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, passed the $1 million mark this weekend with $103k at 114 theaters. That's a cume of $1.09 million in week 3. No Other Land (which opened in late January) is now at $2.055 million after an estimated weekend gross of $135k. Hamdan Ballal, one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary, was freed earlier this week in Israel after being beaten and detained. The film was directed by a group of Palestinian and Israeli activists and filmmakers. Wide-ish: Sony Pictures Classics opened to $1.21 million on 1,017 screens. Moderate: Filipino romantic comedy My Love Will Make You Disappear is grossing $500k on 225 screens opening weekend. Other limited releases: Focus Features' by James Griffiths kicked off with $92k at 4 locations in New York and Los Angeles ($23 PTA). With a 96% Critics Score, initial exit polls from these two markets show a total positive recommend of 92%; with a definite recommend at 79%. Expands into circa 50 theaters in the top ten markets next week Bleecker Street's saw $66.8k on two NYC screens driven by strong reviews and positive work of mouth. Continues a major press push and heads into nationwide expansion next week. In week 2, documentary directed by Jeremy Workman and self-released by Wheelhouse Creative/mTuckman media, saw $23.5k at its IFC Center debut with multiple sold out shows and a gross limited by theater capacity. It also held in Providence and adding select runs across Rhode Island and neighboring areas. So it's looking at a healthy weekend gross of $61k and a cume of $123k including its opening week theater, Providence Place, which sits atop the titular secret abode populated for years by a group of artists and renegades. Documentary from Greenwich Entertainment, on the illustrious six-decade career of the singer/songwriter and LGBTQ activist that began in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960's, opened to $9k on 2 screens, IFC Center and New Plaza Cinema. Debuted at DocNYC last November. Opens in LA on Friday, April 4 at the Laemmle Monica and Glendale, then expands to San Francisco Bay the following week in 4 locations as part of national arthouse tour. Airs on PBS' American Masters in June. Drafthouse Films opened to $17k on 27 screens with multiple sold-out screenings in NYC and LA. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery '1923' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
New York Times
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Disney's ‘Snow White' Has a Sleepy Box Office Start
Disney's latest remake, 'Snow White,' arrived in theaters on Thursday night as one of the most snakebit projects in the company's 102-year history. Almost everything that could have went wrong did, resulting in a torrent of negative prerelease publicity. Did the tumult have an impact on the box office? It certainly didn't help: Based on projections from analysts, 'Snow White' will finish the weekend with a saggy $45 million in ticket sales. In the 15 years that Disney has been producing live-action remakes of its animated classics, none of the big-budget entries have arrived in theaters to less than $58 million, after adjusting for inflation. (That was 'Dumbo' in 2019.) 'Snow White' was expected to collect an additional $50 million or so overseas this weekend. The movie cost at least $350 million to make and market (on par with 'Dumbo' after adjusting for inflation). Still, 'Snow White' is projected to be the No. 1 movie in the United States and Canada over the weekend. It played in 4,200 theaters and gave the struggling movie theater business its second-biggest opening of the year, behind Disney's 'Captain America: Brave New World,' which had $89 million in first-weekend ticket sales. Among other new releases, the gangster drama 'The Alto Knights' (Warner Bros.), which cost roughly $50 million to make, excluding marketing, was on pace to collect a disastrous $3 million from 2,651 theaters. It received weak reviews. 'Magazine Dreams' (Briarcliff), a gritty bodybuilder drama starring Jonathan Majors, was expected to take in about $900,000 from 800 theaters, a result that The Hollywood Reporter called 'D.O.A.' Mr. Majors had promoted the film as a comeback vehicle after his career took a hit when he was convicted in 2023 of assaulting and harassing an ex-girlfriend. Reviews were mostly positive. 'Snow White' divided critics and audiences. Reviews were only 44 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation site. Among moviegoers, however, 'Snow White' did much better: The Rotten Tomatoes 'audience score' was 71 percent positive on Saturday. Latinos made up 25 percent of the audience, which was 68 percent female, according to exit polling cited by analysts. Based on the 1937 animated classic 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' Disney's film ran into one problem after another after starting production in 2021. The coronavirus pandemic, the 2023 actors' strike and extensive reshoots resulted in budget overruns. Disney was criticized by members of the dwarf community for creative decisions involving Grumpy, Bashful, Doc and the gang. And the film's outspoken star, Rachel Zegler, who is Latina, became a lightening rod. Internet users (mostly men) and some right-wing media outlets criticized her casting, contending that an actress of Colombian descent had no business playing Snow White, and that Disney's support of her was an example of Hollywood diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives run amok. Some of those 'go woke, go broke' faultfinders took a victory lap online over the weekend. But analysts pushed back on that theory, saying 'Snow White' most likely struggled at the box office because the underlying intellectual property is old-fashioned. At this point, Disney has remade most of its more recent animated classics and has been forced to move on to less popular properties in its library, including 'Lilo & Stitch.' Its live-action version arrives in theaters in May. Audiences have also started to tire of live-action remakes of animated movies in general, according to analysts, who cite declining returns at the box office. Disney is aware of this trend and has shelved plans to redo 'Bambi' (1942), 'The Sword in the Stone' (1963) and 'Hercules' (1997). For its part, Universal has a lot riding on its coming live-action remake of 'How to Train Your Dragon' (2010). When movies arrive to disappointing ticket sales, studios always say they are hopeful that word of mouth will lead to a wider audience in the following weeks. In the case of 'Snow White,' it may not (just) be spin. 'The success of the film will depend on whether it gets the 'babysitter effect'' — parents looking for ways to occupy young children — 'and plays well for a couple of months like 'Mufasa' recently did,' David A. Gross, a box office analyst, said in an email on Saturday. 'Disney knows how to support their films, and this corridor, which includes spring breaks, is a good one.'
Los Angeles Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Magazine Dreams' is too shallow and glossy to be Jonathan Majors' comeback
In 'Magazine Dreams,' Jonathan Majors plays a volatile bodybuilder named Killian Maddox, presumably because the writer and director Elijah Bynum thought calling the character Murderguy Sulkface was too on the nose. This downbeat drama is as overwrought as Killian's muscles — it's a steroidal portrait of a man in distress. Why is Killian so upset? There are a few reasons, all of which are given the same narrative weight (which is to say, little) even as they range in scale from surviving domestic violence to mean comments on his workout videos. Mainly, it's a movie about looking at someone without really seeing them. Bynum invites us to gawk at Killian's physique — every ab is lit with devotion of a commercial for hot-buttered dinner rolls — and then critiques people who can't see the vulnerability under his rock-hard surface. I've seen the film twice now, first when it premiered at Sundance in 2023, then again more recently, and I still can't see into Killian. He's angry, frustrated and opaque. Bynum's script lumps him in with a litany of issues facing lonely young men: misconceptions about masculinity, an inability to connect with women, a pressure to leave a mark on the world, easy access to guns. 'Magazine Dreams' was shelved when Majors was found guilty of harassment and assault and dropped by his management team and Marvel. Now, it's circled around as his comeback. I can't think of a more ill-advised choice than this flimsy film that wields pity like a sledgehammer, that puts no stock in the anger-management techniques that were a part of Majors' sentence. ('I'm not raising my voice,' Killian repeats like a drill.) The problem isn't the film inadvertently echoes reality and Majors' own history of childhood trauma, his drive to push himself to perfection. It's that the movie's insights into all of this are so shallow that they make a human being feel phony by association. Mostly Killian is just awkward and lost, particularly at the hands of his creator, who's written him to blunder through scenes like he's freshly hatched from an egg. Killian doesn't know how anything works. A grocery store employee, he cluelessly flirts with a co-worker, Jessie (Haley Bennett), by having her ring up his chicken breast and telling her to keep the change. He's on some combination of drugs — a shot and a powder — and it's a mystery how he's figured out how to buy them because pretty much every interpersonal encounter seems to be something he's doing for the very first time. Unironically, his life seems to be karaoking the Eminem song 'Stan,' with Killian scribbling increasingly unhinged letters to his favorite bodybuilder (TikTok sensation Mike O'Hearn) signed 'Your number one fan.' Maybe he doesn't know the song. He listens to death metal. Having blended 'Taxi Driver' and 'Rocky' into a smoothie, 'Magazine Dreams' doesn't give us much of a reason to invest in this guy. Killian lives a repetitive existence: He gets his feelings hurt, he stress-eats and he acts out. The cycle gets wobblier but it doesn't change. He's fixated on a competition judge who, back in 2016, called his deltoids small. That timestamp plus a few quick internet references are the only proof that this isn't a period piece. Otherwise, Killian is surrounded by VHS tapes and staticky TV sets and landlines with the ostensible excuse that he lives with his grandpa, William (Harrison Page). Like every other unnatural choice, I suspect it's mostly for aesthetics. You feel the director's thumbs on every frame, squeezing out any life or lightness or air. The tone is relentless, and the score of slow and craggy strings is a dirge. At least visually, the cinematography is stunning with saturated reds, blues and amber oranges, as well as nifty focus racks that do a lovely job of telling us where to look. The camera is almost never not on Majors' Killian. But what exactly are we supposed to see? I half-expect that the film will eventually defend itself by saying that it takes place in Killian's 'roided-out psychosis. That's the only way to explain how its bodybuilding exhibitions look like Shakespeare performances, with balconies of people applauding nonstop as a soloist flexes onstage. Nothing and no one feels real, including minor characters like a streetwalker (Taylour Paige, coolly enduring a thankless role) in a ridiculous costume of sequins and furs. When the script decides we need to care more about Killian, he'll suddenly turn charming, as when he smoothly orders half the menu at a steakhouse. And when the script decides it needs more tension, he transforms into a confident criminal. Incredulously, he not only destroys property and holds one victim at gunpoint (all while unmasked and dropping obvious clues as to his identity), he also gets away with it without a whiff of legal consequence. Those sequences are clumsily counterbalanced by real-world grievances about how strangers treat a large Black man. Cops harass Killian when he's simply jogging. Later, when Killian triggers a ferocious tit-for-tat with Ken (Bradley Stryker), the owner of a construction company, the man calls him an ape. It's an awful, hurtful moment. But I'm not sure of the film's intentions when Killian responds by flinging food, scaring Ken's kids and pacing the room as though it were a cage. Where is Bynum placing the audience in that scene? With Killian and his justified rage — or with the bystanders who merely see him acting like an animal? There are too many competing, clashing ideas that go unexamined. Bynum uses allusions like anvils, following up that sour note by cueing the ballad 'The Beast in Me' by Nick Lowe. He also has Killian ransack his house to an aria from Camille Saint-Saëns' 'Samson & Delilah,' a reference that only half-works because no woman in here has ever betrayed him. (One man does, but mostly Killian is his own worst enemy.) When he does go on a date with Bennett's Jessie, things naturally go awry. Bynum keeps the camera on her as Jessie crumples her face in her hands. We sense this is only her latest disappointment. It's the best scene in the movie. Majors gives his whole self to this exercise. Even if you only ever see a still frame, the effort Majors has put into looking the part is a testimony to his discipline. He holds the movie up, grimacing, sweating, screaming, so that every beat feels more important than it is. It stings to see how much he's trying to make this script mean something. The performance has pounds of ego in it too. When I first saw 'Magazine Dreams' two years ago, it was my least favorite role Majors had ever done — and I'd made a point to see every one of them, to be there for the entire arc of his career. It felt like we were witnessing the ascension of a star who'd light up Hollywood for decades. Anyone who's read more than one Hollywood biography knows that there are performers who get into the business to make their broken parts feel whole. Subsuming themselves inside a character, exploring ugly emotions in a safe setting — these are ways to fuse reality to fiction and create empathy. I'm just a critic and certainly no psychologist, but on my second watch of 'Magazine Dreams,' it felt like Majors was sharing a piece of his own pain. I wish the film had allowed him, and his character, a chance to exhale.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jonathan Majors is on a redemption tour. For what, he won't say
NEW YORK (AP) — Throughout the implosion of his once-skyrocketing Hollywood career, from his arrest almost exactly two years ago to his harassment and assault conviction, Jonathan Majors has maintained that he has never struck a woman. But on Monday, as Majors was in the midst of a comeback attempt and a PR push that returned him to magazine covers, Rolling Stone published an audio recording of a conversation between Majors and Grace Jabbari. Majors was found guilty of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation for striking Jabbari in the head with an open hand and breaking her middle finger by squeezing it. 'I aggressed you,' Majors acknowledges in the recording, confirming her description of him strangling her and pushing her against a car. The recording appeared to contradict Majors' previous claims and upend his redemption tour just as his film 'Magazine Dreams' opens in theaters Friday. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Majors declined to address the recording, and whether he has assaulted women. 'I can't answer that,' Majors responded. 'I can't speak to that.' Majors says he's changed, but not everyone is convinced Majors, who was sentenced to probation and settled a lawsuit with Jabbari in November, is striving for an unusually swift rebound following a precipitous downfall. Before his March 2023 arrest, Majors was steering toward years of Marvel stardom and a possible Oscar nomination for Elijah Bynum's 'Magazine Dreams,' in which he plays a disturbed aspiring bodybuilder prone to violent outbursts. Two years later, Majors returns to the public eye with a pledge that he's changed just months after completing a year of court-ordered domestic violence counseling. At the same time, he's not directly addressing any of the allegations against him — including those from two previous partners, Emma Duncan and Maura Hooper, who in statements submitted pretrial, detailed physically violent and emotionally abusive incidents that bear some similarities to the Jabbari case. 'It's not something I can talk about legally,' Majors says. 'I said to my wife the other day, I've changed. I don't recognize myself. I don't recognize that guy. I'm in a completely different place. There's no doubt that I was in turmoil. That guy then didn't have any tools to deal with things. I don't know if I liked the guy then. He was accomplished, he was doing great things in certain ways. But I don't know if I would have hung out with him.' Majors, who sat for an interview at a Manhattan hotel without a publicist present, spoke reflectively about his experience of the past two years — with the exception of anything specifically related to the conviction, the additional abuse allegations or the women who say he harmed them. Despite never naming a misdeed, Majors says he is reformed. 'I'd say to anyone who cares to listen: I've had two years of deep thought and mediation and rumination on myself and my actions, my community, my industry,' he said. 'I'm stronger now. I'm wiser now. I'm better now.' Not everyone is convinced. Hooper, who met Majors at Yale Drama School and dated him from 2013 to 2015, described a traumatizing and controlling relationship. A year after their relationship ended, Majors learned of her having a relationship with someone he knew, she said. According to Hooper's statement, Majors called her and shamed her for having an abortion, which he had encouraged, and told her to kill herself. 'The level of anger that I experienced from this man, I don't know you exorcise that from your life or your behavior in only 52 weeks,' Hooper told the AP. 'People go to therapy for years. I went to therapy for years after Jonathan Majors just to get my mind back.' Hooper and Duncan's statements were ultimately not allowed as evidence during the trial, but they remain public record. Attorneys for Majors have denied some of their claims, describing both relationships as 'toxic.' Duncan, who dated and was engaged to Majors from 2015 to 2019, described at least eight physical or threatening encounters in her statement. During an argument in 2016 while driving in Chautauqua, New York, he threatened to strangle and kill her, she said. At a spa in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she discovered text messages between Majors and another woman and began packing to leave. He pushed her into couch and began choking her while saying he was going to kill her, Duncan said. (She didn't respond to an email from the AP seeking comment. Attorneys for Jabbari also didn't respond to emails.) 'There is a documented history of 10 years of abuse of women where he calls women 'sluts,' he calls us 'fat whores,' he tells us to kill ourselves,' Hooper says. 'When I hear people say, 'Come on, how come he can't come back into the fold?' I don't know that those people have read this or understand that we're talking about a pattern.' Another test of #MeToo in Hollywood A changed political climate and several recent cases, including the overturning of Harvey Weinstein's New York sexual assault conviction, have suggested Hollywood has entered a new chapter in the #MeToo movement. Majors' attempted comeback is one of the most conspicuous tests to the fraying curbs of cancellation and #MeToo vindication. 'We're suffering a period of tremendous political retrenchment and backlash in this movement,' says Debra Katz, the civil rights attorney who represented Christine Blasey Ford, accuser of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along with Weinstein accusers. 'Much of what we've fought for seems to be on the line.' But women are still coming forward, and Katz believes companies and industries will hold the accused accountable. For his part, Majors, who was dropped from all projects following his conviction, has no new films announced. 'Magazine Dreams,' which debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before his arrest and was subsequently dropped by Searchlight Pictures, is being released by Briarcliff Entertainment, the indie distributor of 'The Apprentice.' 'Jonathan made a mistake. There was due process. Justice was served. And then we move on, which I think is generally how we like to think this country operates,' Tom Ortenberg, chief executive of Briarcliff, said Thursday. 'We're faced with two choices: Should 'Magazine Dreams' be allowed to be seen? Or should we burn the negative?' Numerous A-listers, including Michael B. Jordan and Matthew McConaughey, have advocated for Majors' return to Hollywood. Still, Katz believes Majors' comeback will ultimately sputter because it hasn't gone beyond the strategy of what she describes as 'get a good PR firm and show my soft side.' 'I think he's going to suffer a significant comeuppance,' says Katz. 'He hasn't owned up to the behavior. He hasn't apologized. The only thing he appears to be sorry about is that he got caught.' Majors' past, and where he goes next For Majors, his self-examination has focused more on an earlier experience he suggests was at the root of what he calls his turmoil. 'There was a lot of trauma that was piled up and ignored. The best way to describe it is it as an energy that unfortunately was there,' says Majors. 'I was feeding the wrong wolf. And that wolf became unignorable. And I was really good at moving fast and outrunning the rabid wolf of trauma. The best thing that could have happened to me — not to my career but to me — was to have to face it.' Majors, who was raised by his pastor mother in Texas after his father left, says from the age of 9 to about 13, he was the victim of multiple incidents of sexual abuse, from, he says, 'two male family members and my sisters' friends who were older than me — they were older than her.' 'It felt like kids being kids and then it became something different very quickly,' Majors says. 'And then it became a pattern.' Majors only recently began wrestling with this past, he says, working through it in therapy and in conversations with his family. A phone call with his sister, he says, reawakened memories. 'It was an experience that I just killed in my head,' Majors says, tearing up. 'It's not a boo-hoo-bro, so-sad-for-you situation,' he says, wiping away tears. 'It's life. It's the hand you're dealt, and I didn't know how to play those cards. I'm learning how to play those cards.' Now, Majors says, he's never been happier. On Tuesday, he and Meagan Good were wed in a small, impromptu ceremony in Los Angeles officiated by his mother. 'We called the family and said, 'Hey, jump on FaceTime,'' he says, calling it the best day of his life. 'Magazine Dreams,' he thought, would never see the light of day. Now, though, he's hopeful he can act again. 'I now understand that acting is in many ways my ministry. It's in many ways my calling,' Majors says. 'If it's not, I'm waiting for someone to tell me it's not. I'm waiting for God to tell me it's not. He's not said that.'
Associated Press
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Jonathan Majors is on a redemption tour. For what, he won't say
NEW YORK (AP) — Throughout the implosion of his once-skyrocketing Hollywood career, from his arrest almost exactly two years ago to his harassment and assault conviction, Jonathan Majors has maintained that he has never struck a woman. But on Monday, as Majors was in the midst of a comeback attempt and a PR push that returned him to magazine covers, Rolling Stone published an audio recording of a conversation between Majors and Grace Jabbari. Majors was found guilty of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation for striking Jabbari in the head with an open hand and breaking her middle finger by squeezing it. 'I aggressed you,' Majors acknowledges in the recording, confirming her description of him strangling her and pushing her against a car. The recording appeared to contradict Majors' previous claims and upend his redemption tour just as his film 'Magazine Dreams' opens in theaters Friday. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Majors declined to address the recording, and whether he has assaulted women. 'I can't answer that,' Majors responded. 'I can't speak to that.' Majors says he's changed, but not everyone is convinced Majors, who was sentenced to probation and settled a lawsuit with Jabbari in November, is striving for an unusually swift rebound following a precipitous downfall. Before his March 2023 arrest, Majors was steering toward years of Marvel stardom and a possible Oscar nomination for Elijah Bynum's 'Magazine Dreams,' in which he plays a disturbed aspiring bodybuilder prone to violent outbursts. Two years later, Majors returns to the public eye with a pledge that he's changed just months after completing a year of court-ordered domestic violence counseling. At the same time, he's not directly addressing any of the allegations against him — including those from two previous partners, Emma Duncan and Maura Hooper, who in statements submitted pretrial, detailed physically violent and emotionally abusive incidents that bear some similarities to the Jabbari case. 'It's not something I can talk about legally,' Majors says. 'I said to my wife the other day, I've changed. I don't recognize myself. I don't recognize that guy. I'm in a completely different place. There's no doubt that I was in turmoil. That guy then didn't have any tools to deal with things. I don't know if I liked the guy then. He was accomplished, he was doing great things in certain ways. But I don't know if I would have hung out with him.' Majors, who sat for an interview at a Manhattan hotel without a publicist present, spoke reflectively about his experience of the past two years — with the exception of anything specifically related to the conviction, the additional abuse allegations or the women who say he harmed them. Despite never naming a misdeed, Majors says he is reformed. 'I'd say to anyone who cares to listen: I've had two years of deep thought and mediation and rumination on myself and my actions, my community, my industry,' he said. 'I'm stronger now. I'm wiser now. I'm better now.' Not everyone is convinced. Hooper, who met Majors at Yale Drama School and dated him from 2013 to 2015, described a traumatizing and controlling relationship. A year after their relationship ended, Majors learned of her having a relationship with someone he knew, she said. According to Hooper's statement, Majors called her and shamed her for having an abortion, which he had encouraged, and told her to kill herself. 'The level of anger that I experienced from this man, I don't know you exorcise that from your life or your behavior in only 52 weeks,' Hooper told the AP. 'People go to therapy for years. I went to therapy for years after Jonathan Majors just to get my mind back.' Hooper and Duncan's statements were ultimately not allowed as evidence during the trial, but they remain public record. Attorneys for Majors have denied some of their claims, describing both relationships as 'toxic.' Duncan, who dated and was engaged to Majors from 2015 to 2019, described at least eight physical or threatening encounters in her statement. During an argument in 2016 while driving in Chautauqua, New York, he threatened to strangle and kill her, she said. At a spa in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she discovered text messages between Majors and another woman and began packing to leave. He pushed her into couch and began choking her while saying he was going to kill her, Duncan said. (She didn't respond to an email from the AP seeking comment. Attorneys for Jabbari also didn't respond to emails.) 'There is a documented history of 10 years of abuse of women where he calls women 'sluts,' he calls us 'fat whores,' he tells us to kill ourselves,' Hooper says. 'When I hear people say, 'Come on, how come he can't come back into the fold?' I don't know that those people have read this or understand that we're talking about a pattern.' Another test of #MeToo in Hollywood A changed political climate and several recent cases, including the overturning of Harvey Weinstein's New York sexual assault conviction, have suggested Hollywood has entered a new chapter in the #MeToo movement. Majors' attempted comeback is one of the most conspicuous tests to the fraying curbs of cancellation and #MeToo vindication. 'We're suffering a period of tremendous political retrenchment and backlash in this movement,' says Debra Katz, the civil rights attorney who represented Christine Blasey Ford, accuser of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along with Weinstein accusers. 'Much of what we've fought for seems to be on the line.' But women are still coming forward, and Katz believes companies and industries will hold the accused accountable. For his part, Majors, who was dropped from all projects following his conviction, has no new films announced. 'Magazine Dreams,' which debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before his arrest and was subsequently dropped by Searchlight Pictures, is being released by Briarcliff Entertainment, the indie distributor of 'The Apprentice.' 'Jonathan made a mistake. There was due process. Justice was served. And then we move on, which I think is generally how we like to think this country operates,' Tom Ortenberg, chief executive of Briarcliff, said Thursday. 'We're faced with two choices: Should 'Magazine Dreams' be allowed to be seen? Or should we burn the negative?' Numerous A-listers, including Michael B. Jordan and Matthew McConaughey, have advocated for Majors' return to Hollywood. Still, Katz believes Majors' comeback will ultimately sputter because it hasn't gone beyond the strategy of what she describes as 'get a good PR firm and show my soft side.' 'I think he's going to suffer a significant comeuppance,' says Katz. 'He hasn't owned up to the behavior. He hasn't apologized. The only thing he appears to be sorry about is that he got caught.' Majors' past, and where he goes next For Majors, his self-examination has focused more on an earlier experience he suggests was at the root of what he calls his turmoil. 'There was a lot of trauma that was piled up and ignored. The best way to describe it is it as an energy that unfortunately was there,' says Majors. 'I was feeding the wrong wolf. And that wolf became unignorable. And I was really good at moving fast and outrunning the rabid wolf of trauma. The best thing that could have happened to me — not to my career but to me — was to have to face it.' Majors, who was raised by his pastor mother in Texas after his father left, says from the age of 9 to about 13, he was the victim of multiple incidents of sexual abuse, from, he says, 'two male family members and my sisters' friends who were older than me — they were older than her.' 'It felt like kids being kids and then it became something different very quickly,' Majors says. 'And then it became a pattern.' Majors only recently began wrestling with this past, he says, working through it in therapy and in conversations with his family. A phone call with his sister, he says, reawakened memories. 'It was an experience that I just killed in my head,' Majors says, tearing up. 'It's not a boo-hoo-bro, so-sad-for-you situation,' he says, wiping away tears. 'It's life. It's the hand you're dealt, and I didn't know how to play those cards. I'm learning how to play those cards.' Now, Majors says, he's never been happier. On Tuesday, he and Meagan Good were wed in a small, impromptu ceremony in Los Angeles officiated by his mother. 'We called the family and said, 'Hey, jump on FaceTime,'' he says, calling it the best day of his life. 'Magazine Dreams,' he thought, would never see the light of day. Now, though, he's hopeful he can act again. 'I now understand that acting is in many ways my ministry. It's in many ways my calling,' Majors says. 'If it's not, I'm waiting for someone to tell me it's not. I'm waiting for God to tell me it's not. He's not said that.'
