I'll tell you, folks. Legendary's Toxic Avenger reboot is already shaping up to be a hell of a thing. It's been announced that Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings franchise, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) and Julia Davis (Sally4Ever, Gavin & Stacey) are being added to the cast. They join Peter Dinklage, who's set to play Toxie, as well as Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, and Kevin Bacon, for this off-the-wall reboot. Macon Blair (Green Room, Murder Party) is set to direct.
Hailed as one of Troma Entertainment's most iconic properties, The Toxic Avenger is saturated with environmental themes and takes the idea of an unconventional superhero to strange and twisted places. The original film, directed by Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, follows a meek mop boy named Melvin who falls into a vat of toxic waste. After a grotesque transformation, Melvin seeks out the evildoers who tormented him. In the new version, Toxie 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. Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz will serve as producers.
The original film was so successful that it led to several sequels: The Toxic Avenger Part II, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie, and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. The corrupted character even got his own stage play in addition to an animated TV series called Toxic Crusaders (1991), in which Toxie and a ragtag group of misfit superheroes waged war on pollution.
While Paige is set to play Toxie's girlfriend in the film, and Bacon the villain, Davis and Wood's roles are being kept under wraps at this time.
This is one of the strangest reboots to be announced since, well, quite a while. Kaufman has never been much of a fan of big studios in general, so I find it interesting that this project exists at all. Be that as it may, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out. I mean, what does a contemporary take on the Toxic Avenger even look like these days? If anyone can pull this character off with a fair amount of quirk, it's Dinklage. I'll be watching the development of this one very closely.