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Disney fires Majors
Disney, which owns the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, has dismissed actor Jonathan Majors, who has been playing Kang the Conqueror, the new adversary of the franchise, and was due to appear in this role in the fifth movie of the Avengers series.
Majors has just been convicted of assault and harassment charges against his then girlfriend, though the jury acquitted on some other charges.
Disney has been praised for acting swiftly, on the day of the verdict. Since the trial has been ongoing, Disney certainly knew that there would be a verdict shortly, and it would not have been hard to agree two alternative statements well in advance. The verdict did not come out of nowhere, and there was plenty of time to prepare.
Marvel now needs to either recast the role or change the creative direction of Avengers 5, which was previously known as The Kang Dynasty. The change in title suggests that they are keeping their options open.
Action movies in particular need to be careful about promoting as stars (even portraying villains) actors with convictions for acts of violence, so the decision to fire him was probably an easy one, if potentially very expensive.