Marvel is headed in a new direction, one that includes Dr. Doom rather than Kang the Conqueror.
In February of 2023, Jonathan Majors made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Commercially, the film pulled in approximately $476 million at the box office on a budget of more than $330 million. Critically, the film received less-than-stellar reviews, but critics offered abundant praise for Majors’ performance as the movie’s lead villain.
“The film’s main asset is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror: his performance, with its velvet-soft line deliveries and unfathomable, boundless rage, is the magnetic core of this incoherent effects-dump of a movie,” Wendy Ide of The Guardian wrote.
“The latest film about the minuscule superhero sets up Marvel’s next big villain but other than that, it has nothing to offer beyond drab-looking action,” Caryn James of BBC adds.
One month following the film’s release, Majors was arrested and accused of assault, strangulation, and harassment after the police found his former girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, unresponsive at her New York apartment. In the months that followed, Variety and Rolling Stone published pieces documenting allegations of Majors abusing and harassing women dating back to 2013. Ultimately, the actor was found guilty of one count of reckless assault and a charge of harassment. However, he was found not guilty on another charge of assault and one of aggravated harassment.
After Majors was found guilty of reckless assault in the third degree, Marvel reportedly dropped Majors and moved in a different direction regarding the next central villain in the MCU. However, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige says the shift began before Majors received a verdict.
“We had started even before what had happened to the actor happened, we had started to realize that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos, and that there was only one character that could be that, because he was that in the comics for decades and decades,” Feige told The Hollywood Reporter. “Because of the Fox acquisition, we finally had it, and it was Dr. Doom. So we had started talking about Dr. Doom even before we officially pivoted from Kang. And in fact, I had started talking with Robert [Downey Jr.] about this audacious idea before Ant-Man 3 even came out. It was a long plan that we had, to take one of our greatest characters and utilize one of our greatest actors.”
At San Diego Comic-Con last year, Marvel revealed its plans to have Robert Downey Jr. play the role of Dr. Doom in the next phase of the MCU. Downey Jr. is expected to debut in his new role in Avengers: Doomsday, which is slated for a 2026 release date.
