“Magazine Dreams” Builds Up the Tension in New Trailer

By Kip Mooney • On • In Featured, Trailer Featured, Trailer Comments Off on “Magazine Dreams” Builds Up the Tension in New Trailer

It's been a long, uncomfortable journey for Magazine Dreams to reach a wide audience. Premiering at Sundance in 2023 to acclaim and controversy, Searchlight Pictures acquired the film and set it up for an awards run. It should have capped a monumental year for star Jonathan Majors, which included villainous turns in Creed III and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But then the strikes happened, and Majors revealed himself as a real-life villain, convicted on two counts of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. Disney, which owns Searchlight, dropped the film and returned the rights to the filmmakers. (They also removed Majors's Kang from any MCU projects following Season 2 of Loki.)

Now, Briarcliff Entertainment will release the film. The distributor is no stranger to controversial projects, including documentaries like Fahrenheit 11/9 and The Dissident, as well as last year's Oscar-nominated The Apprentice. Audiences will decide for themselves if the film lives up to the hype, and if Majors should become a star.

Majors plays Killian Maddox, an aspiring bodybuilder. Struggling with mental health and physical limitations, he pushes his mind and body to the breaking point for fame. The film earned comparisons to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Robert De Niro's committed, terrifying performance as Travis Bickle. Those are mighty big shoes to fill. But whatever one thinks of Majors personally, he certainly has the acting chops to pull off a role this intense.

Magazine Dreams arrives in theaters on March 21.

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About Kip Mooney

Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.