The Toxic Avenger Director on Scoring ‘Perfect’ Release After ‘Nervous’ Wait | Interview
ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to The Toxic Avenger writer and director Macon Blair about the new ultra-violent reboot movie. Blair discussed his relationship with the original Toxic Avenger film, the film’s temporary struggle to find a distributor, and more.
“In The Toxic Avenger, when a downtrodden janitor, Winston Gooze, is exposed to a catastrophic toxic accident, he’s transformed into a new kind of hero: The Toxic Avenger,” the official synopsis reads. “Now, Toxie must rise from outcast to savior, taking on ruthless corporate overlords and corrupt forces who threaten his son, his friends, and his community. In a world where greed runs rampant… justice is best served radioactive.”
The Toxic Avenger hits United States theaters on August 29, 2025, from Cineverse.
Brandon Schreur: I wanted to ask about your relationship with The Toxic Avenger. It’s obviously been around for decades, now, thanks to Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Entertainment. After the first movie, there were sequels, but there were comics, video games, and all of that stuff. When did you first watch The Toxic Avenger and what kind of stuck out to you about that movie as being, ‘Whoa, this is something special that I want to work on at some point in the future?’
Macon Blair: It’s interesting that you phrase it like that. Sixth grade. My buddy Andy’s older brother, who was sort of like this metalhead. He was the one who showed us all the cool stuff. He was like, ‘You’ve got to watch this movie.’ We checked it out and we were howling with laughter. It was so unhinged and ridiculous. I think we knew that it was meant to be ridiculous, but it was still very powerful in that way. It also had this handmade quality to it that maybe I had seen before in other movies, but I don’t remember. That was the first time I really had the feeling of, ‘Oh, this was not a studio with famous actors and big special effects. This was just regular dudes doing this.’
The sense of humor and the do-it-yourselfness were both very inspirational to my group of friends at that age, when we were kind of trying to make our own movies. Like, we can f—ing do this, too.
I never had the idea, ever, that one day I was going to do The Toxic Avenger. It’s not that I wanted to or didn’t want to, it just didn’t seem like a possibility. It was sort of like, ‘We’ve seen this, now we’re trying to do our own thing.’ But, many years later, I find out they’re soliciting pitches for the screenwriting job for a remake that Legendary is doing with Troma. It felt like, ‘Oh, this is an opportunity to go back to those movies that I was making in sixth grade with my buddies.’ That’s what was so inspiring, then, and set me on this path, to a large degree. There was something that felt very symmetrical about that — maybe I could try to get this job. At least writing the script, I had no expectations it would go any further than that.
Sixth grade, that’s kind of young. There’s some stuff in that movie, you know? Kind of along those lines, like you said, The Toxic Avenger is such a unique case because it’s everything that big studio filmmaking is not. It’s very low budget, it’s for kind of a niche audience. There’s the scene with the kid on the bike that’s burned into my brain forever. When you’re approaching the original subject matter and making a remake, what are the elements and vibes that are the most important to get right, in your mind, for a new version of The Toxic Avenger in 2025?
It’s interesting — the kid on the bike is one that comes up a lot. If we had wanted to do that, I think Legendary would have been okay with that. I just didn’t have an idea for how to gracefully fit into the story. I felt like, if we just sort of shoved it in there just to do it, it would feel clunky. To me, it was the idea that there’s a certain offhand silliness to the sense of humor. A little juvenile comedy, but also a little of sweetness. A little violence being played for comedy in a cartoonish kind of way. Also, just a feeling that this world that these characters are in has a greasy, grimy feel to it. All of that together — whatever the plot is, or whatever the characters are going through — it’s that overall bubble that they’re in that characterizes those original movies.
That’s what I wanted to bring to this one, more than any kind of plot. I kind of felt like that if we go back and do the exact same version of a young kid who works at a health club, is getting picked on by bullies, and do that exact plot again, it’d really start to feel redundant. It’d start to put a spotlight on the question of, ‘Why are you redoing this at all?’ My answer to that was, if we can retain the vibe of the original but create a character with a new path or a new journey, so it feels fresh, then it can feel like a continuation of those earlier movies and not just a, ‘We did it too!!’ That’s kind of like, why bother? So, that was the thinking.
Totally. And I think you nailed that, too; this walks the line of it feels like Toxic Avenger, but it’s also a whole new story, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in this new version.
Right, that was the hope, that you’d feel at home, but not like, ‘Oh, now he’s going to go out the window and fall into…’ You know, not see it coming, so much.
And you’ve got a lot of surprises in this one, too, especially in the second half. The history of this movie’s release has been pretty well-documented — I know it screened at Beyond Fest in 2023, and I remember hearing all about it from people on Twitter who were there. And I was like, ‘I can’t wait to see this movie, it sounds like it’s going to be totally my thing.’ But it was a while before Cineverse picked up the distribution rights. Can you walk me through what was going through your head at that time? Did you ever think there was a chance people weren’t going to be able to see this movie, or did you have faith the whole time that a distributor would come along?
Honestly, a little bit of both. Its first premiere was actually at Fantastic Fest in Austin, and about two weeks later, it was at Beyond Fest in LA. Both of those screenings went really well. At that time, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re in good shape.’
As time went on, it was not getting picked up by the mainstream distributors. Of course, that is nerve-wracking. I’m like, ‘Oh, yikes, what’s going to happen?’ I also knew that Legendary, the executives there — especially Alex [García], the producer on the movie — was a Troma fan. For him, it was not just, ‘We’re going to acquire this property and who cares, it doesn’t matter.’ He was very passionate about it, and he was really working hard, as were all the folks over there, to find a home for it.
I think there were a couple of things. The market was in a weird position, and people weren’t buying a lot of things that weren’t mainstream hits. Also, it’s a little bit of a quirky movie, and it’s not to everyone’s taste. So I think people were kind of like, ‘I don’t know if this is a crowd-pleaser.’ I was kind of nervous, there — not because I thought it would necessarily go away, but, in this day and age, you never know. There are so many things that are out of your control. Even if the Legendary people are very passionate about it, they’re owned by these larger corporations that control all the assets, and I don’t know what they’re going to do.
But I did have faith because I knew the folks were working hard. On the other side of it, I kind of feel like that time happened. Whatever happened in the interim that allowed Cineverse to cut the line and become the number one position to release it, it was totally worth it. They saw it and were like, ‘No no no, this can be a crowdpleaser, this can be counterintuitively a mainstream movie.’ They figured out a way to connect with audiences and get the word out with that idea. If waiting a couple of years to end up connecting with them is what you’ve got to do, then I’m happy to do that.
Definitely. Cineverse seems like such a good fit, too, because I think it was last Christmas when they were making huge headlines for Terrifier 3. That blew up. They picked this up, and it still gets to be unrated; maybe that’s becoming a little more popular, but still is pretty unheard of a lot of the time. What was that feeling like, when they told you this was happening? I’m sure that had to feel great.
I was doing backflips, absolutely. I knew they had just had that success with Terrifier, and they did it in a very clever way that didn’t necessarily rely on — I think maybe what was giving the movie a hard time before that is the idea of how we’re going to sell this if we’re relying on television commercials and old-school movie marketing. Cineverse comes in with all these weird, interesting [tactics]. They had Toxie at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. It’s this weird little event, but then it gets traction on social media, and people are talking about it. It ends up advertising the movie in this interesting, weird way that doesn’t rely on expensive ad campaigns. I was like, ‘Oh, shit, that’s very clever.’
Stuff like that that they’re doing to boost the movie and make it seem like this crowd-pleasing event is really exciting to see. Again, that’s what I mean when I say, if you’ve got to wait a little while to get with the perfect partner, it’s worth it. I think they’re spinning something really special out of the situation.
Thanks to Macon Blair for taking the time to discuss The Toxic Avenger.
Source: Comingsoon.net