ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Magazine Dreams’ Jonathan Majors about the new bodybuilding drama. Majors spoke about the film’s haunting scenes that see Killian Maddox’s rage get unleashed, plus the character’s troubled search for an idol. Directed by Elijah Bynum, Briarcliff Entertainment will release the film in theaters on March 21, 2025.

“Killian Maddox is consumed by his dream of becoming a world-famous bodybuilder and one day gracing the cover of fitness magazines.  He lives a lonely, regimented life, and his relentless drive for perfection only pushes him deeper towards self-destruction, but beneath his tenacious pursuit of superstardom lies a desperate, aching need for human connection.  As he battles both the limits of his physical body and his own inner demons, Magazine Dreams explores the lengths one man will go in his haunting quest for recognition in a world that often overlooks him,” says the synopsis for Jonathan Majors’ Magazine Dreams.

Tyler Treese: I found Magazine Dreams’ examination of celebrity culture very interesting. Killian has a parasocial relationship with a top bodybuilder, Brad Vanderhorn. I feel like we’re seeing that more than ever with social media. What did you find most interesting about Killian looking for guidance there when he lives with a war hero grandfather at home?

Jonathan Majors: The conversation around Vanderhorn. He is the dream, right? He is, in many ways, a deity to Killian. His paw-paw, the war hero, is in front of him. That’s an earthly connection. There’s respect there. There’s love there. There’s all these things. But Killian’s ambition is greater than the place that he’s at. He can’t see that, right? That he is from this war hero, this man, and that to him is not enough. So he didn’t have to look elsewhere, right?

He looks to Vanderhorn, who represents to him this deity, right? He finds out that he’s just a man. Not only that, but he’s a man with flaws, and we can leave it at that. Once he gets that understanding, right, once he gets close to that forbidden fruit and has the experience he has, he wakes up.

There are some really phenomenal moments in this film where the rage just kind of consumes Killian, like when he is wrecking the paint shop. How is it releasing that aggression in those scenes? Because I assume you can’t really do a lot of second takes when you’re causing actual destruction to those areas.

You can do resets, right? But you’re right, bro. Those things take a long time, especially that one, right? I actually think we only had two goes at that, so like three o’clock in the morning, we had to beat the sun that night.

Let’s speak about the aggression. What is seen and then what is felt in our medium of filmmaking and as an actor are sometimes different. So, for me in process, when Killian is releasing that, he is avenging his paw-paw, right? So there is a sense of — we’re talking about the character — there’s a sense of duty, right? That he has to do that. Is he right to do that? In my personal opinion, no. But in the world of the movie and his social understanding, he’s a war hero. You’re disrespecting him, this is what needs to happen. He tries to fight against it, but he relents. So, in that moment, it was cathartic, but then he very quickly realizes that it was destructive.

Thanks to Jonathan Majors for talking about Magazine Dreams.