Source: Mike Coppola / Getty
Things continue to look, well, not so good for once-loved-but-recently-embattled actor Jonathan Majors, who, last week, was arrested for allegedly strangling a woman he knows. Before the news dropped, Majors had filmed U.S. Army recruitment ads that were to air during the NCAA’s Final Four basketball games this weekend, according to the Associated Press. But after Majors’ arrest, the Army immediately pulled the commercials, which had a lot of folks thinking: “Damn, is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ just not a thing anymore?”
Since his arrest, Majors’ attorney, Priya Chaudhry, has claimed that his accuser recanted her allegation and that video evidence shows Majors “is provably the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows.” She also recently shared text messages purported to be from Majors’ accuser that Chaudhry claimed to indicate that her client is innocent, although, in truth, they do not. It’s also been widely shared that claims have been made by two filmmakers that Majors has a reputation for being “cruel” and “abusive.”
Suffice it to say; it isn’t likely that the Army is going to reverse its decision to remove Majors from its platform. In fact, Army officials are saying that it has been able to ditch Majors without losing much of its investment in the ad campaign that featured the Creed III actor.
From AP:
Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, head of Army marketing, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that in the past week the Army was able to avoid any loss of the planned $70 million advertising buy, either by postponing ads or replacing them with other pre-existing commercials that were quickly updated.
The ads were set to appear on television, online on places such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and on digital and physical billboards, including on buses. That ad purchase was the main portion of the campaign, which had a total cost of $117 million.
“We are absolutely able to utilize a majority of what we have invested,” Fink said in an interview. “We think that we’ll have some brand new creative ads in time for the Women’s Final Four on Friday.”
He said that the Army gathered “an enormous amount” of content and footage for the two commercials — titled “Overcoming Obstacles” and “Pushing Tomorrow” — that featured Majors as the narrator.
“A majority of that content did not contain our main narrator. … So we have a ton of content to go back to, to create basically new commercials new ads, if we need to,” Fink said. “The campaign is full steam ahead.”
Majors will still have his day in court, but, at this point, it looks like this incident may follow him around for his whole career, whether he’s guilty or not.
See how Twitter reacted to the Army pulling the initial ads below.
