On Sept. 21, 2023, in Austin, Texas, “The Toxic Avenger” had its big debut.
A remake of the 1984 film from schlock pioneers Troma Entertainment, this new version felt like an elevated take – the social commentary and environmentalism of the original was there, along with the gross-out gags, but the filmmaking (by writer/director Macon Blair) was more competent, and the cast was full of recognizable performers like Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon. The crowd for “The Toxic Avenger,” which screened as part of Fantastic Fest, appreciated this latest incarnation – there were applause breaks and laughter throughout. The movie hit. And it hit big.
Almost two years later and the film is finally a wide release courtesy of Cineverse, the same distributor that transformed the “Terrifier” franchise from word-of-mouth hit to genuine phenomenon. But the question remains: why did it take so long to come out?
After securing distribution from Lionsgate, the movie languished, causing Blair to wonder if it’d be released at all. The online rumor-mill fired up — was it too violent? Unreleasable? Would it go the way of “Batgirl?” And then, eventually, “Terrifier” distributor Cineverse came in to rescue the film, setting a wide release complete with marketing stunts and a heartwarming partnership to erase medical debt.
This is the winding story of how “The Toxic Avenger” came to be.
The road to a remake
Almost from the time the original “Toxic Avenger” was released, there was talk of a more mainstream remake with a bigger budget and more audience-friendly stars. The original movie, which concerned a nerd who, after being doused with toxic runoff, becomes a hyper-violent superhero, had a hooky central conceit that, if treated properly, could appeal to larger audiences.
In Kaufman’s book “All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger,” co-written by a young James Gunn, he revealed that New Line Cinema had originally optioned the character but dropped their plans to focus on another, potentially more lucrative slime-based characters – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
By the early 2010s the property became hot again, with filmmakers like “Hot Tub Time Machine” director Steve Pink and animation director Conrad Vernon circling the project, along with stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger (attached to Pink’s iteration) and producers like Guillermo del Toro (for Vernon’s version). Eventually the rights to “The Toxic Avenger” lapsed and in 2018 Legendary Pictures acquired the property, with writer/director Macon Blair attached in 2019.
In 2023, Blair told TheWrap that he had known Legendary because he had done some dialogue passes on their “Godzilla” movies. Blair had watched the film when it was first released. “It exposed me to independent filmmaking. In a lot of ways, I was into movies, but it was mainstream box office type stuff. And this was the first time it seemed like they just shot this,” Blair said at the time. “They just went outside and shot a movie. It was not spaceships. It was not like this grand spectacle and it was still very entertaining.”
Blair proposed an R-rated, man-in-suit movie inspired by the Zucker Abraham Zucker movies like “The Naked Gun.” Legendary was on the same wavelength. The movie shot in the summer of 2021 in Bulgaria, with Dinklage playing the “human” version of the character and Luisa Guerreiro in the Toxic Avenger suit, with Dinklage dubbing dialogue in later.
The film was finally ready by 2023, had some splashy festival screenings and then … the wait began.
… Well?
“I’m trying not to be cagey. I really wasn’t under the hood for that,” said Blair, when we asked why it took “The Toxic Avenger” so long to find a distribution partner.
Even if he didn’t know, he could guess – Legendary was looking hard for a partner. At the time, though, “streamers were contracting and a lot of things were not getting funded or bought.” Anecdotally, he had heard that only things that were “characterized as being a real middle-of-the-road, crowd-pleasing homerun were going to get moved to the front of the line.” Things like “The Toxic Avenger,” something that was “maybe too niche or appeals to a particular audience were getting moved to the back of the line.”
Soon, rumors started to spread online.
“A narrative got loose that this was un-releasable and that makes it sound like it’s so insanely violent that it cannot be shown to the public, which it’s not. It’s quite a gentle movie. But it got repeated enough times that it was out there,” Blair said. “Nobody wanted it for a while.”
Still, Legendary kept pushing it along. “They were always very supportive. It was a little nerve-wracking for me but I had great faith in them,” Blair said. The filmmaker is now thankful for what he considers this “fallow period,” because it allowed for Cineverse to slide in and rescue “The Toxic Avenger.” “They have turned out to be the ones that got the vibe of the movie and recognized that it could have this crowd-pleaser potential,” Blair said.
All of that time waiting for Cineverse turned out to be essential to the film’s success. “If waiting two years to land with them was the cost of entry, then great,” Blair said.
Yolanda Macias, chief motion pictures officer for Cineverse, said that the company is “filmmaker-friendly and fan-forward.” “As a result we heard from Troma fans that they were begging for a distributor to rescue the movie. Every other studio walked away,” Macias said. They were in discussions with Legendary last year and closed the deal before the holiday break. “Once we screened the movie, we knew it was a film we needed to release on the big screen and share with fans,” Macias explained. Cineverse moved quickly to acquire the property, unaware of what kept other potential buyers at bay.
In that in-between period after the premiere at Fantastic Fest and before the eventual acquisition by Cineverse, Blair admitted that he was nervous. He’d heard stories about “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme” getting permanently shelved. (“Coyote vs. Acme” was improbably rescued earlier this year.) Still, he would get monthly check-ins from his executive at Legendary telling him not to worry; they’d get the movie out at some point. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t chew my nails a little bit,” Blair admitted.
Finally unleashing “The Toxic Avenger”
Blair’s time making “The Toxic Avenger” was a radically different experience than the one he had on his first as a writer/director, “I Don’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore.” It was produced by Netflix in the halcyon days of 2016. “I don’t think this exists anymore,” Blair said about his experience on his first movie. He pitched the film in 2015, during the studio’s transition from DVDs-in-the-mail to full-blown movie company. “My sense was that they were like, We’re going to roll the dice on things that are not going get funded elsewhere.’ I had been trying to make that movie for about a year and a half,” Blair said. He said they immediately agreed to his casting decisions and when they asked how much money he’d need for the production, they asked, “Is that enough money?”
“It was this wild west mentality and I’ve never really seen anything like that before or since,” Blair said. “It was really surreal.”
Now that “The Toxic Avenger” is coming out, Cineverse has unleashed some incredibly creative marketing moves and brand partnerships.
“The marketing team had a lot of fun marketing the film with stunts, social content and other creative ways to engage fans,” said Macias. There was a San Diego Comic-Con Hall H panel, where the cast and creators were joined by Kaufman, who Macias said, “delivered fun and silliness all day.” Bacon sang about the movie on his social media. And they partnered with Liquid Death, a company that can only be described as a sparkling water company run by edge-lords, for an appropriately goopy commercial. On Earth Day, Toxie hit the streets of Los Angeles to clean up the streets.
And their latest promotional stunt is actually incredibly heartwarming – Cineverse partnered with non-profit group Undue Medical Debt to erase $5 million of health bills. According to the official press release, $5 million worth of health bills will get erased “no matter what.” “For every million bucks the movie makes at the box office, another million in debt will go up in toxic smoke,” read the official release.
It might have taken a while, but “The Toxic Avenger,” a very silly movie, has the chance to do some very serious good when it is finally released into theaters. And that’s downright super.
