"Not all monsters are scary to people. Not if it's one fighting crime in the Garden State. Criminals, beware of the Toxic Avenger."
Fantastic Fest has announced that this year's opening film will be the remake of Troma classic, The Toxic Avenger, and we have a first-look image of the grotesque hero of the title along with a promo poster.
We found out back in 2018 that Toxie was set to get a new lease of life at Legendary Pictures when the studio acquired the rights to the character, and the news followed that none other than Game of Thrones alum Peter Dinklage would be the one to pick up the mop and make it his mission to strike fear into New Jersey's criminal underbelly as the Toxic Avenger.
Jacob Tremblay (Room, The Predator) will also star as Toxie's son, and Taylour Page (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) will play the female lead.
The Toxic Avenger was first introduced in the 1984 movie of the same name from indie studio Troma Entertainment, and has since gone on to achieve cult status with several sequels, a comic book series and even a short-lived 1991 children's animated show called The Toxic Crusaders.
You'll find an (obscured) first glimpse of Dinklage as Winston Gooze, aka Toxie, at the link below. We also have a poster with the tagline, "A Toxic World Deserves a Toxic Hero."
Fans were concerned that Legendary's upcoming reboot might tone down some of the crazier elements of the original in order to secure a family-friendly PG-13 rating, but, thankfully, that doesn't appear to be the case.
Macon Blair's (I Don’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore, Green Room) movie has been officially rated R for "Strong violence and gore, language throughout, sexual references and brief graphic nudity”
It sounds like this contemporary take will follow the same basic premise as the original, as "a struggling everyman is pushed into a vat of toxic waste and is transformed into a mutant freak who must go from shunned outcast to underdog hero as he races to save his son, his friends, and his community from the forces of corruption and greed."
No theaterical release date has been announced.