‘The Toxic Avenger’ Reboot Gains Macon Blair as Writer and Director

Back in December of last year, it was revealed that Legendary Pictures was actively developing a feature film based on comic book character The Toxic Avenger.

Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz of Troma Entertainment will serve as producers, with Alex Garcia and Jay Ashenfelter overseeing for Legendary Pictures, and as of today, we know that Macon Blair (Green Room) on board to write and direct the feature, according to Variety.

We were kind of holding out hope for a true Troma reunion, with the constant rumor that James Gunn was going to have some involvement, but we think Blair is a fine choice to helm the project.

Turns out that Kevin Smith was also approached at one point about writing and directing The Toxic Avenger, but he turned it down:

“Somebody asked me, ‘Hey man, we’ve got THE TOXIC AVENGER and we’re gonna remake it, do a reboot, and hey, you’re from Jersey.’ And you know, I always kind of dug what Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma people do, it was right in Jersey, I remember seeing them on the news all the time – ‘Hollywood, motion pictures in New Jersey? Right here at Troma!’ And TOXIC AVENGER was insanely well known. So I always respected the Troma world and Toxie franchise. So I was like, all right, I’ll go down the rabbit hole a bit and see what’s what.

And we parted ways fundamentally on the budget, because I was just like, ‘Part of the charm of the TOXIC AVENGER is that it was made for two nickels. If you’re gonna do it again, don’t spend a lot of money.’ But they were like, ‘No no no, it’s a 35 million dollar movie.’ And I was like, ‘It’s a f*ckin’ remake of THE TOXIC AVENGER, the guy in a tutu with a bad makeup job, what are we gonna spend all the money on?’ So right then and there, I’m clearly not on the same page. In my head, if I need to see a TOXIC AVENGER remake, it should be done in the spirit of the original. Instead, they were literally trying to start a franchise, Marvel-ize it and stuff like that. And I’m like, ‘I don’t know if you guys saw that movie.’ So I just quietly stepped away. I understand what they were going for, but I would never want to see that version of the movie. It would be like somebody doing a 35 million dollar version of CLERKS. Why would you bother?”

We’ll let you know what we hear about possible timelines for an expected production start as soon as the information becomes available.