Marvel

‘Black Panther’ Brings Hope, Hype and Pride

February 9, 2018 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

“I suppose neither of us is used to the spotlight,” a dapper T’Challa, the prince of Wakanda, says upon meeting Natasha Romanova, a.k.a. the Black Widow, in “Captain America: Civil War.” A few scenes later, a recently orphaned and vengeful T’Challa, swapping his bespoke blue suit for a full-body bulletproof one, reappears as a new Marvel movie superhero.

The prince will have to live with the attention: Even before its Feb. 16 release, “ Black Panther ” smashed box-office records , beating out “Captain America: Civil War” on first-day advance ticket sales and surpassing “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” to become Fandango’s top-selling superhero movie in history. Perhaps even more impressive, the film is also outpacing its cinematic counterparts in cultural reach.

“I’ve been waiting all of my life for ‘Black Panther,’” said DJ BenHaMeen, host of FanBrosShow , a weekly podcast on “urban geek” culture. “That said, I know where I was, the exact street in Houston and the exact time on Oct. 28, 2014, when Marvel officially announced that they were doing the movie.”

Not since Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” in 1992 has there been so much hype and hope for a movie among African-American audiences. From special group outings planned by excited fans to crowdfunding campaigns to ensure children can see it, “Black Panther” is shaping up to be a phenomenon. In December, a viral video of two African-American men excited to see the movie’s poster with its all-star black cast — “This is what white people get to feel like ALL THE TIME?!!!!” one man wrote on Twittered — seemed to capture the anticipation, garnering more than 2.5 million views.

What has audiences so eager this time is in part the combination of an auteur African-American director (Ryan Coogler of “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed”), a heavyweight cast (Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker) and a soundtrack co-produced by a rap superstar (Kendrick Lamar), all working on one of the most popular franchises in Hollywood. But the excitement has also been fueled by the origin story of the African superhero.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Black Panther was the first black superhero in mainstream comics, making his debut in Marvel’s Fantastic Four No. 52 in 1966. He went on to appear in Avengers titles and took his first star turn in Jungle Action No. 5 in 1973. He had his ups and downs: his own series largely penned by Kirby, a cancellation in 1979 and a return in the 1980s. From 2005 to 2009, he was the subject of another series, this one written by the filmmaker Reginald Hudlin (“Marshall”). In 2016, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a new series of comic books, while Joe Robert Cole and Mr. Coogler worked on the script.

In many ways, Black Panther is part of a current wave of black superheroes, like Netflix’s Luke Cage and CW’s Black Lightning . But “Black Panther” has the setting of Wakanda, a fictional African country that is wealthy (thanks to vibranium, a mineral with energy-manipulating qualities) and technologically advanced. Part of the movie’s emotional and visual appeal lies in the fact that Wakanda has never been colonized.

“Wakanda is a kind of black utopia in our fight against colonialism and imperial control of black land and black people by white people,” said Deirdre Hollman, a founder of the annual Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. “To the black imagination, that means everything. In a comic book, it is a reality, and through a major motion picture, it’s even more tangibly and artistically a reality that we can explore for ourselves. There’s so much power that’s drawn from the notion that there was a community, a nation that resisted colonization and infiltration and subjugation.”

For Frederick Joseph, a marketing consultant who created the #BlackPantherChallenge , a GoFundMe campaign to buy tickets so youngsters can see “Black Panther” in theaters, the complexity of Wakanda takes on new meaning in our current moment. Compared with President Trump’s disparagement of Haiti and African nations , he said, “You have Wakanda as a place of Afro-futurism, of what African nations can be or what they could have been and still be had colonialism not taken place.” (Mr. Joseph’s campaign, which raised more than $40,000 to take children from the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem to the film, has led to more than 70 similar efforts.)

The Black Panther’s regal alter ego, Prince T’Challa, is a draw as well, said Jonathan Gray, author of the forthcoming “Illustrating the Race: Representing Blackness in American Comics.” He explained: “Now there you have every black boy’s fantasy. He is richer than Bill Gates, smarter than Elon Musk, better looking than Denzel.” And with vibranium, “he is the hereditary ruler of the richest nation on Earth. The movie is about wish fulfillment. When you see Bruce Wayne, this dashing billionaire, where is the black version of that? You got T’Challa.”

In this sense, “Black Panther” is as much an alternative to our contemporary racial discourse as it is a throwback, not only a desire for what could have been but also a nostalgia for what we once had. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this movie appears precisely in a moment in which our politics seems inescapable,” Mr. Gray said, adding later that “Black Panther” should be understood in a political context in which both the legal gains of the civil rights movement and the interracial optimism of the Obama era have been undermined.

For Marc Bernardin, an author of the comic book “Genius” and host of the podcast “Fatman on Batman” with the director Kevin Smith, the movie taps into “the cultural longing for what Obama was, the time in which you didn’t check your phone every day hoping the world wasn’t on fire again. A time where devaluation of young black life wasn’t as stark and awful as it feels like it is right now.”

Simply going to the movie can be interpreted as a small gesture of protest and a grand expression of cultural pride.

“Black Panther” has already become a kind of shared language. “Last week I was at the mall when another black dude passed by me,” Mr. Bernardin said. “We gave each other a nod, and he said, ‘Black Panther’s’ in a month, yo.’ That was his version of ‘what’s up,’ his way of marking of time.”

In addition to fans wearing custom-made Black Panther costumes and African-inspired haute couture to the premiere last month, African-American civic groups and others are buying out movie theaters so African-American children can experience the film with one another.

In Oakland, Calif., LaDawn James Williams originally intended to fly to New York to see it with her college friends from Howard University. Instead she plans to host a “Black Panther” screening for her local chapter of Jack and Jill of America. She, her husband, and their 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son will watch it with more than 90 other African-American families in a private viewing.

“We’ll be able to take the mask off,” she said. “It’s going to be really subtle, but we’re going to get certain things about the movie and its language that only we know. So I want this to be something we do together: my family, my chapter and my community.”

Black Hair’s Blockbuster Moment

February 24, 2018 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

In Wakanda, the techno-brilliant African nation of the Marvel film “Black Panther,” black warrior women don’t wear wigs. Compelled to conceal her shaved head to carry off an undercover mission, General Okoye, played by Danai Gurira, calls her flowing wig “a disgrace” and discards it the instant she draws her spear to battle the bad guys.

The general and her royal guard of female combatants, the Dora Milaje warriors, are among a cast of characters graced with gorgeous natural hairstyles that imbue this film with the visual power of holistic black beauty. The movie weds a Black Nationalist aesthetic to an ethos of global kinship. It projects a resilience that captures the mood of our present moment.

Despite and perhaps because of a surge in white supremacist language in the United States, a wave of black cultural resistance is flooding the arts as well as the streets. And with it, black hair in its natural state of sublime uprightness has returned as a symbol of political consciousness and visionary imagining. The self-assured leading women of “Black Panther” wear their “Wakanda knots,” elaborately interwoven braids, regal snow-white dreadlocks and decorated bald scalps with ease. When I saw these actresses onscreen in the company of my awe-struck children, I felt an exhilarating sense of community pride.

I am a black woman who stopped chemically altering my hair after an inner battle that began in childhood. Like countless other black girls, I once donned a yellow bath towel as a makeshift wig as a child, luxuriously flipping it as if it were real blond hair.

I decided to go natural in 1991, during my junior year in college. It was a difficult choice, and it was possible only in a context of black female friendships and the shared epiphanies of a feminist collective called The Rag. The women on The Rag (yes, we thought we were quite clever) met on the Radcliffe campus to discuss our emerging understandings of feminism, and black feminism in particular. Paramount for us, as in the #MeToo movement now, was the emboldening recognition that we were not alone.

When I stopped straightening my hair — as a way of affirming my worth despite mainstream messages to the contrary — I had the support of an emotional, intellectual and political community. My college roommate, Keiko Morris, and I enacted this ritual together: cutting off tresses made foreign by chemical “beauty” products and choosing how we would relearn what our nappy hair could mean to us.

Keiko, who went on to become a journalist, and I wrote about the experience, as did Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Pearl Cleage, Bell Hooks and the many other black female writers before us who have made hair a recurring theme. Our essay, “The Straight and Narrow,” was published in the book “Testimony,” edited by our college classmate Natasha Tarpley, who would later publish the uplifting children’s picture book “I Love My Hair!” Keiko and I wrote that as young girls, “we saw white women, not ourselves, in the images that America chose to project — we heard family members comment that so and so’s baby had been born with good hair and they ‘hoped it would stay that way.’ ”

Our undergoing the “big chop” disappointed family members and lessened our value in the heterosexual dating market, but we were determined to endure recrimination and rejection, together.

The early 1990s was a long time ago. So much seems to have changed in the decades since I stopped straightening. There is a rich and varied digital discussion of black natural hair care, thanks in part to the early-aughts natural-hair movement, when digital innovators like Curly Nikki (Nikki Walton) and Afrobella (Patrice Yursik) recorded their transition from straightened to natural styles and offered hair care tips to thousands of followers. Chris Rock released the HBO documentary “Good Hair” (2009) and expressed the wish that his daughter would treasure what is inside her head instead of what grows on it.

Fewer white strangers today tell me that I look just like Whoopi Goldberg because I wear dreadlocks (though it happened in Montana last summer) or have the nerve to reach out and touch my hair without permission (though it happened in Michigan last fall).

Despite this progress, hair remains a raw nerve for young black women. I learned this when I began offering a course on hair in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan three years ago. The students in my classes were telling stories much like those my college friends and I had shared. They were still describing the pain and humiliation they felt as women with nappy or “bad” hair, or the preferences and privilege they knew as women with wavy or loosely curled “good” hair.

A black trans man recounted the freedom that he felt when he transitioned in high school and no longer had to control his hair as a black girl would, fearfully running away from the rain and avoiding swimming pools. Students talked about high school teachers who said their hair was blocking others’ view of the board. Female students said potential romantic partners saw only straighter hair, and lighter skin, as attractive and assumed that any dark-skinned woman with long hair was a “fake”; they wrote about despising themselves because their hair made them alien and ugly. They had reclaimed natural hair despite self-doubt and rampant rejection.

Going natural is still hard for many black women with kinky hair. The choice means risking the mantle of respectability for which middle-class African-Americans have long fought and relinquishing a dream of beauty that popular culture prizes. Professional costs remain as well, as demonstrated by a United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2016 affirming a company’s right not to hire applicants with dreadlocks .

Now, it seems to me, a cultural tide is meeting the more individualized, self-care focus of the natural-hair movement. In 2017, Colin Kaepernick defended his Afro by implying that the former quarterback Michael Vick — who said Mr. Kaepernick should trim his hair to look “clean cut” and “presentable” — suffered from Stockholm syndrome; the “Black Panther” actress Lupita Nyong’o criticized Grazia U.K. magazine for retouching a cover photo to remove her natural hair; and Davina Bennett, Miss Jamaica, won second runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant while daring to wear a spectacular sundial Afro.

The record-breaking “Black Panther” is the sensational popular example, a visual anthem for this moment. The hair director for the film, Camille Friend, said in an interview with The Cut that she insisted on natural hair for the actors and drew on Zulu, Masai, Hima and Afropunk looks. But the movie does not stand alone.

The fiber artist Sonya Clark has produced the elegantly stylized Hair Craft Project , which features black hairdressers as craftswomen whose intricate art form is the braid. Regis and Kahran Bethencourt of the Creative Soul studio in Atlanta have created an “Afro Art” series featuring African-American children with sculpted natural hair and elaborate costumes. The children in these images face the camera with a deep-down, dare-me beauty complemented by glistening Afros, voluptuous rolls and undulating braids with cowrie shell accessories that enhance the texture of a proud and voluminous birthright.

In the mid-1990s, soon after I stopped relaxing my hair, the prescient race and gender theorist Angela Davis warned about the devolution of natural black hair from a strong statement of political solidarity to an empty sign of consumerist acquisition. The Afro was being resuscitated as “revolutionary glamour,” she said, black chic in a bottle, denuded of political potency.

Angela Davis lamented fashion masquerading as politics, but the pendulum has swung back, reflecting what the historian Tanisha Ford has called “a revolutionary politics of style.” Natural black hair is again a sign of political intention, visually cuing a culture of resistance that asserts the value of difference, of conviction in the face of adversity, of the intrinsic worth of all human beings. The ultra-Afro, the meta-cornrow, the rocket-shaped twists springing out into space. Africa has produced a hair type with an innate capacity to defy gravity. It demonstrates to us all in these times: And still we rise.

Vincent D’Onofrio reveals ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2 already planned

March 27, 2023 by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

Filming for Daredevil: Born Again may have only just begun, but Vincent D’Onofrio told Newsweek that plans for a second season have already been set in motion.

D’Onofrio first portrayed the Kingpin/Wilson Fisk alongside Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock back in 2015 when the Daredevil Netflix show began. The drama was the first of many Marvel/Netflix shows and also led to a spin-off, The Punisher, which focused on Jon Bernthal’s anti-hero Frank Castle.

The show was canceled by Netflix in 2018. However, that proved not to be the end of the story as Cox and D’Onofrio returned to Marvel for Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye , respectively. Cox also starred in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and both will appear in Echo before the new Daredevil show.

D’Onofrio spoke to Newsweek about what it has been like to star as Wilson Fisk opposite Cox and Bernthal again, only this time for Disney+.

Vincent D’Onofrio Reveals ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2 Already Planned

D’Onofrio spoke to Newsweek ahead of the Season 3 finale of crime drama Godfather of Harlem . As he is already a few weeks into filming Daredevil: Born Again, he sported his classic bald look for Wilson Fisk , while talking over Zoom .

The actor explained that the new show might be different to what fans of the original are expecting. However, it is also something that will provide “gigantic payoffs” in both its first and second season. D’Onofrio added that both Cox and Bernthal play “a major part of the show.”

“We’ve only just started shooting. I think we’re a couple weeks in, and the show is going to be very, very different than the Netflix show, and it’s so exciting because what we’re doing is quite something,” D’Onofrio told Newsweek.

“I think it’s something that people are not going to expect. But, always with these Marvel old comic stories that are being revisited and reinvented by us actors, and the writers, the main thing is to answer the fans.

“To give them what they want but try to be original in some way at the same time, and so that’s what we’re doing on the show,” D’Onofrio added. “It’s definitely an original way to look at this, and it’s really deep, really emotional.”

The actor then teased the plans for a second season of the Disney+ show, as he added: “And, by the second season, there are gigantic, gigantic payoffs—in the first season, too, but I can’t say much about that—but the fans are gonna really get what they want. It’s really quite cool to be doing it.”

How Daredevil: Born Again Filming is Going

Interest in Daredevil returning to screens remained high, even after the drama was canceled at Netflix. Fan campaigns like “Save Daredevil” continually expressed the desire among viewers to see the characters return.

D’Onofrio reflected on getting to portray Wilson Fisk again, saying: “Over the years, it’s pretty obvious that I love playing this part.

“[Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige and [executive producer Louis D’] Esposito invited Charlie and I to do this again and do it in a way that we could have a blast, so that’s what we’re doing,” said D’Onofrio.

“It’s hard work. We have a lot of episodes to shoot. We’ve got a long road ahead. We won’t be finished until December, and so it’s quite a commitment, but this character is just… I love playing him.”

Despite the long shoot, D’Onofrio was full of praise for his co-stars Cox and Bernthal for their professionalism on set. The trio are, so far, the only original cast members confirmed to be returning to the show. Others like Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson, who played Matt’s friends Karen and Foggy, are not yet confirmed to be appearing in the 18-part first season.

“These are two guys that, just as men and actors themselves, are legitimate people and I love those guys, Jon and Charlie. I just love them,” D’Onofrio said of his co-stars. “They’re just awesome, good people, and their acting ability speaks for itself. They’re both very good, and it’s nice.

“It’s always nice to come on a set and you know that the other main actors are as prepared as anybody could be. It shortens the day, and that kind of preparation lends itself to a great scene.”

Daredevil: Born Again is expected to be released in early 2024 on Disney+. Its first season will have 18 episodes. Seasons 1 to 3 of Netflix’s Daredevil are available to watch on Disney+ now.

Jonathan Majors could sue girlfriend for making assault charges against him

March 27, 2023 by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

Jonathan Majors should not pursue legal action against a woman who accused him of assault after she allegedly recanted her statement, even though he could seek to file a defamation lawsuit.

Police arrested the 33-year-old Creed 3 star on Saturday in Chelsea, New York City and he appeared in the Manhattan Criminal Court later that evening to face charges of two counts of assault in the third degree, aggravated harassment and attempted assault.

Prosecutors claimed Majors slapped the 30-year-old woman, believed to be his girlfriend, in a cab, “causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear,” and also put his hands on her neck “causing bruising and substantial pain.”

Representatives for the actor maintained his innocence and his lawyers claimed “they are gathering and presenting evidence” for prosecutors, including video footage and witness testimony from the driver to provide to the district attorney “with the expectation that all charges will be dropped imminently.”

Even if the accuser has recanted her accusations and criminal charges against Majors are dropped “this legal matter may be far from over,” according to New York attorney, Frank Salzano.

He told Newsweek that while “Majors could seek to file a defamation lawsuit against the accuser for making a false public statement” he would advise the actor not to pursue it.

“Defamation claims are always tricky because the ‘truth’ is an absolute defense and any such claim for defamation would result in all the facts and circumstances surrounding the night in question being relevant and discoverable in any court proceeding,” said the managing partner of Salzano Ettinger Lampert & Wilson law firm.

“If the accuser’s claims are proven to be false and made with intent to harm Major, then the accuser could be looking also at a malicious prosecution (or) abuse of process claim, however those are a less likely outcome,” he said.

Salzano added: “Situations of this nature regarding public figures are very complex in nature because on one hand, inaction by Majors may be viewed publicly as a tacit admission of some wrongdoing, however, an affirmative claim for defamation by Majors keeps this matter in the public arena that much longer.

“If Majors was my client, I would advise him to seek a public retraction by the accuser and then move on and not file a defamation claim. Majors is rising star in Hollywood.”

Majors has enjoyed a meteoric ascent in Hollywood since appearing in the cult sci-fi hit Lovecraft Country on Apple TV+.

“The news was shocking and disappointing given the rise of Jonathan Majors in a short amount of time. He’s become Hollywood’s new darling,” film critic Emmanuel “E-man” Noisette told Newsweek.

Majors really hit the big time after he was introduced as Marvel’s latest over-arching villain when he debuted as Kang the Conqueror in the Disney+ series, Loki.

Majors recently starred in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opposite Paul Rudd and will also appear in the upcoming Marvel features, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in 2025 and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2026.

The actor made his Academy Awards debut earlier in March when he presented an award with his Creed 3 co-star, Michael B. Jordan.

One of the first negative consequences of his arrest came when the U.S. Army pulled advertisements Majors appears in.

He narrated two of the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign ads, which they took off air until the investigations against him are concluded.

“The U.S. Army is aware of the arrest of Jonathan Majors and we are deeply concerned by the allegations surrounding his arrest…while Mr. Majors is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete,” Army Enterprise Marketing Office public affairs chief Laura DeFrancisco said in a statement.

Jonathan Majors allegations sparks Ezra Miller comparisons

March 27, 2023 by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

Movie fans have been speculating what lies in store for Jonathan Majors’ career after he was arrested on assault charges over the weekend.

Police arrested the Marvel star, 33, in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City after receiving complaints of a domestic disturbance. Majors faced court on Saturday evening on charges of two counts of assault in the third degree, aggravated harassment and attempted assault.

Majors is accused of hitting a 30-year-old woman believed to be his girlfriend, “causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear,” according to police. He also allegedly put his hands on her neck “causing bruising and substantial pain.” Representatives for Majors have maintained his innocence and claimed the woman has since recanted her allegations.

But many have been left wondering what impact the allegations will have on his meteoric rise in Hollywood and compared him to another actor fronting a superhero franchise—Ezra Miller.

One of the first indications of an impact on Majors’ career, the U.S. Army paused its on-screen advertisement campaign which features the actor, following his arrest. Majors stars in two of the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” as an on-screen narrator. The military pulled those ads and others in the campaign.

Majors rose to prominence in the Apple TV+ series, Lovecraft Country but became a household name when he was cast as the newest Marvel villain, Kang the Conqueror, in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania . Kang is set to also appear in the major upcoming Marvel films Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in 2025 and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2026 . He also recently starred alongside Michael B. Jordan in the latest installment of the boxing film franchise, Creed 3 .

Prominent film critic and Marvel mega-fan Emmanuel “E-man” Noisette told Newsweek if the charges are dropped then Majors should have nothing to worry about.

“The news was shocking and disappointing given the rise of Jonathan Majors in a short amount of time, he’s become Hollywood’s new darling,” Noisette said.

But it might not be all clear sailing as some people came out of the woodwork following his arrest to accuse Majors of being “abusive.” Filmmaker A.B. Allen and Tim Nicolai took to their social media accounts in a series of now-deleted posts.

Nicolai described Majors as “a sociopath and abuser and that is how virtually everyone speaks about him.”

Noisette said given that Kang’s character “has been depicted as someone who has many variants and he can be anything from any race to any gender or any species.” The film critic pointed to examples in MCU titles such as the Disney+ series Loki where Tom Hiddleston’s character appeared in many forms including a female Loki, an alligator Loki and an older Loki played by Richard E. Grant. Majors’ Kang also appeared in many variants in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania post-credit scene.

“If there are some dark skeletons in his closet that is something they (Marvel) are going to have stay aware of it… and given the nature of the MCU and the nature of his character, thanks to multiverse, concept Marvel already has a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” he said.

“They have wiggle room, if they had to recast they could easily do it.”

Noisette was adamant that until prosecutors officially dropped charges then “we have to believe the victim” and not allow “confirmation bias” whether for or against Majors because “we have to go with the evidence… and champion the fight for justice over any type of popularity or preference.”

Following news of his arrest, a discussion began on Twitter as to whether Marvel would recast Majors—a likely expensive exercise and logistical nightmare—or keep him on and rehabilitate his image via a well-orchestrated public relations campaign.

Newsweek reached out to Disney for comment.

“I hope the victim in this is being cared for and looked after bc right now Jonathan Majors is the biggest rising star on the planet with the biggest machine behind him and that machine is going to try to chew her right up. I wish her peace and solace despite what’s coming,” tweeted creative consultant @brownandbella.

She was retweeted by writer Kayleigh Donaldson who added : “This is another reason I think we need to keep an eye on how Warner Bros. tries to rehabilitate Ezra Miller for The Flash press tour. If they can get enough of the media to capitulate to their demands (and they will), what’s to stop anyone else from doing it with violent abusers?”

And HuffPost’s senior culture reporter, Candice Frederick also wondered how this would play out. “Related: I’m curious to see how Hollywood moves with Ezra versus how it will move with Jonathan Majors,” she tweeted .

The Flash’s Miller has a trail of controversies and arrests behind them including being arrested twice in Hawaii in 2022, once for disorderly conduct and harassment and once for a second-degree assault.

Miller, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, was charged with felony burglary in Stamford, Vermont and even though the pled not guilty, they could face 26 years in prison.

They have also been accused of abuse by women across Europe, including an incident in Iceland in 2020, an investigation into trespassing in Berlin which has since been dropped, and accusations of grooming by the parents of Native American teenager Tokota Iron Eyes . They filed a restraining order against Miller.

A PR expert told Newsweek there was too much invested in Miller and The Flash by Warner Bros. to let it fail. The next The Flash film is due to hit cinemas in June.

“Warner Bros. Discovery will watch and see how the [legal] cases pan out and look to their belief on what social and public sentiment might be,” Juda Engelmayer, the president of HeraldPR told Newsweek last year . “They have too much invested here, not just the cash, but DC Extended Universe [DCEU] storylines and future programs based on the outcome and success of The Flash .”

Engelmayer added that while some stars managed to rehabilitate their embattled reputations, such as Robert Downey Jr. in the 1990s, some such as Lindsay Lohan, Shia LaBeouf and Winona Ryder either had to work for years to get their careers back on track or were never able to.

“Some worked hard to overcome it, some had better luck than others. The key was sincerity in their efforts, the speed at which they were able to gain control over their problems (seek help, serve time, devotion to rehabilitation, etc), and even luck in their abilities to get another chance with key roles,” Engelmayer said.

Majors will appear in court in May in New York City and his lawyer vowed they would contest the allegations against him.

“Jonathan Majors is completely innocent and is provably the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows. We are quickly gathering and presenting evidence to the District Attorney with the expectation that all charges will be dropped imminently,” his attorney, Priya Chaudhry said in a statement.

“This evidence includes video footage from the vehicle where this episode took place, witness testimony from the driver and others who both saw and heard the episode, and most importantly, two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations. All the evidence proves that Mr. Majors is entirely innocent and did not assault her whatsoever.

“Unfortunately, this incident came about because this woman was having an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to a hospital yesterday. The NYPD is required to make an arrest in these situations, and this is the only reason Mr. Majors was arrested. We expect these charges to be dropped soon.”

Update 3/27/23, 10:47 a.m. ET: This article was updated to add comments from Emmanuel “E-man” Noisette.