‘The Toxic Avenger’ Director on Concerns It Would Get Shelved, Luring A-List Talent Into an Unrated Splatterfest and Sequel Hopes

Macon Blair saw the controversial 1984 film “The Toxic Avenger” as many Millennials did: on a contraband videotape courtesy of a friend’s older brother. The 12-year-old Blair was exactly the right age to be on the wavelength of Troma’s signature gross-out satire, and it fueled the budding filmmaker with inspiration.

“Someone had gotten their hands on a VHS camera, and we were trying to make our own movies,” he says. “The tone of this, along with Monty Python and zombie stuff from George Romero, really came into the stuff we were trying to make as short films. Also, the feeling that it was totally homemade, not a Hollywood movie. It was seemingly regular people in their hometown doing it. So that was hugely inspirational and something that carried forward for us.”

Blair’s newest film is a remake of the seminal indie, which is opening in theaters Friday via Cineverse and Iconic Events Releasing. It stars Peter Dinklage as a down-on-his-luck janitor who becomes a violent hero after being doused in toxic waste. Along the way, he must wrangle being a father to a sullen teen (Jacob Tremblay), an evil CEO with a pollution problem (Kevin Bacon) and many more wacky characters, with jokes flying by like a gory “Naked Gun.”

The journey began in 2019, when Legendary Pictures teamed with Troma Entertainment for new take on the series’ blood-soaked hero, Toxie. While Blair was in the mix as they were soliciting pitches, he never anticipated writing and directing his own chapter.

“The idea of doing a remake of Toxie never ever occurred to me,” Blair says. “It was formative for me at that age, and it put us on a path of making our own movies. But I was trying to do different things. Yet I realized that some of these scripts I was trying to write had a little bit of that same style, but they couldn’t get made because they weren’t based on anything.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that A-list stars were willing to take on some of the wildest roles. Blair says that one critical “yes” got the ball rolling.

“I took a roll of the dice with Peter,” Blair says. “I knew him a little bit, so I sent him the script and said, ‘Hey, we can talk if you want.’ It turns out he knew the original and was a fan and really needed no translation. He got the tone immediately. I suspect once you know Peter is attached to a movie, it legitimizes things in a certain way. Then other people started coming on board quickly.”

Luckily, once Blair secured his cast, he was able to film his vision without interference. When asked about any boundaries, he says he was given free rein by producers.

“It was green lights the whole way through,” Blair says. “If anything, they said, ‘Let’s go for it. We’ll tell you when to tone it down,’ and they never did. They were very encouraging.”

Although there were no limitations, Blair wasn’t only interested in the film being a piece of transgressive art. He modified some elements from the original version — which was notorious for scenes where a child is murdered and a dog is killed — that he wasn’t interested in reviving.

“It wasn’t a matter of what’s shocking or not shocking,” he says. “It was simply what is funny to me, and honestly, there were things about the original that were not funny to me then and aren’t funny to me now. I say that with great affection, but there were some things that I thought, ‘Yeah, it’s not really my thing.’ But there were not any sort of cultural or timely conversations about, ‘As of this date and time, you’re no longer allowed to make jokes about X, Y and Z.’ That never came up once.”

One element that Blair wanted to keep was the undercurrent of sweetness, which is present in the original film via Claire, Toxie’s girlfriend. In the remake, Toxie’s relationship with a deceased girlfriend’s teen son grounds the narrative.

While he’s hesitant to reveal any type of plotlines he’s thinking about for future installments, Blair would love to return to the “Toxic Avenger” would again if he was able.

“The straight answer is there’s there’s nothing concrete, and I don’t know if there ever will be,” he says. “If anybody were to ask me to talk about that, I would love to talk about it. I think there’d be a lot more fun adventures to go on. The draw for me would be getting to work with that group of people again in front of and behind the camera.”

It makes sense why he’d be cagey about future installments, given the two-year wait from the 2023 world premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest until the 2025 wide release. During this time, fans took to social media wondering if the film had been shelved or if fans would ever be able to see it. Blair says that he was confident things would work out, but it was still a stressful wait.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious at all, because you just don’t know,” he says. “I always had total faith in Legendary, and I was in contact with them and they were always working and talking with people. But I know it’s a tall ladder, and there are people higher up. It did cross my mind that somebody may have the idea that this movie might be more valuable as a tax write-off than it would be as a release, outside of their control. It crossed my mind, and that made me feel nervous, but I did have faith that Legendary was going to work it out. It just took a minute. It was a weird time in the industry. The streamers were doing less and less. It’s also a strange movie, and if something doesn’t seem like a surefire crowdpleaser, straight down the middle of the road-type of release, I can understand how people might get cold feet.”

Despite the delay, Blair says he’s thrilled that Toxie is getting a theatrical release — and believes Cineverse’s success with another unrated series may have helped solidify the decision.

“Cineverse happened to be a group that did see potential,” he says. “‘This could be a crowd pleaser.’ Maybe that’s them coming off their expertise with the ‘Terrifier’ movies and things like that. Whatever it is, they had a particular angle on it, the material and also a way to market it to people that turned out to be just right. So in the end, the wait was worth it. There was a little bit of hand wringing in the meantime though.”

Watch “The Toxic Avenger” trailer below.