Magazine Dreams Came To Be After Elijah Bynum Saw Jonathan Majors' Face On A City Bus

We're only two months in, but this year officially belongs to Jonathan Majors. Sorry, I don't make the rules — but I also have no complaints. Though he only broke into Hollywood five years ago, Jonathan Majors has quickly established himself as a huge star. And if you're hoping to see that star power in action, then 2023 certainly won't disappoint. Majors will next be seen in two back-to-back blockbusters: "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaia," and "Creed III." But even outside of the potential to make a killing at the box office, Majors has been turning heads. Last month, the year of Majors kicked off with the Sundance premiere of "Magazine Dreams," in which he plays the perfectly named Killian Maddox, an amateur bodybuilder fending off personal demons as he attempts a rise to fame.

In his very impressive career, guided by shrewd choices and star-making performances, "Magazine Dreams" is a big deal. A film festival darling that left audiences buzzing after its Sundance premiere, the drama marks the first time Majors can truly be called the leading man of a movie (we've previously seen him shine in ensemble stories like "The Harder They Fall" and "Da 5 Bloods"). And clearly, being centerstage is not an opportunity he took lightly. /Film's Chris Evangelista wrote in his review, "No matter how dark things become, Majors still awes with his powerhouse performance. He's so good here it's scary, and scary is the point."

But perhaps most impressive is the fact that "Magazine Dreams" exists in large part because of Jonathan Majors. If not for his meteoric rise through Hollywood, writer-director Elijah Byum might never have penned the film in the first place.

The genesis of "Magazine Dreams" emerged in the early days of the pandemic. Bynum, like most of the world, was pondering the subject of isolation and in the spirit of funneling that into a creative outlet, wanted to zero in on a character forgotten by society. Sitting in the gym one day, he noticed the way everyone's eyes slid right off of a massive bodybuilder who inspired such fear that no one wanted to make eye contact. This, he realized, was the character he was looking for.

During a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Bynum revealed that the first draft came quickly after that encounter. But it wasn't the satisfying follow-up to "Hot Summer Nights" that he was looking for, so he shelved it and looked elsewhere for his next directorial project. Then, much like the bodybuilder who served as the initial spark, came another random jolt of inspiration: this time it took the form of Jonathan Majors' face on the side of a Los Angeles city bus.

"That's when it really clicked. 'Oh, I haven't been thinking about the character the right way,'" Bynum told THR. "I started writing the script all over again, specifically for him. And that turned out to be the script that we shot."

By this point, landing Jonathan Majors was already a challenging feat. While this was long before he was set to make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, the actor was very much in demand coming off his role in HBO's "Lovecraft Country." And he's never been shy when it comes to turning down scripts.

Majors was in production on the star-studded western "The Harder They Fall," when Bynum reached out with the "Magazine Dreams" script and a personal letter. But Majors, dedicated to putting the craft first, didn't start by reading the letter. First and foremost, he focused on the script — and after reading through it, knew he had to play the role.

"The script was just so incredible, and Killian was so impossibly vulnerable, impossibly human," Majors explained. Signing on was no simple commitment: playing a bodybuilder is the kind of transformative role that requires an intense lifestyle change. But for Majors, this was part of the appeal. "You don't get many of those in a career," he told THR. "As a young actor, I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to take that challenge, physically and emotionally."

Majors has since dubbed the bodybuilding process "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." While he was already in boxing shape thanks to his role in the upcoming "Creed III," becoming Killian Maddox was a whole new trial that involved 18 months of training and consuming 6100 calories a day, all leading up to 24 days of filming "Magazine Dreams." And according to the buzz surrounding this much-hyped movie, it was very much worth the trouble.