The Toxic Avenger is getting the big-budget, mainstream remake it never really needed

By Sam Barsanti | December 11, 2018 | 1:59am

Aux Features Film

Troma’s Toxic Avenger movies are gleefully wild and gross and nihilistic, to the point where Toxie himself has become the mascot for the Troma brand, but modern Hollywood’s insatiable hunger for superheroes can’t even ignore cult classics for very long. According to The Hollywood Reporter, actual movie studio Legendary (no offense, Troma) has picked up the rights to make a big-budget, mainstream-targeted remake of The Toxic Avenger, with original directors and Troma founders Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz on board as producers. Legendary is reportedly planning to turn The Toxic Avenger into a franchise, even though it’s already been a franchise for a long time (including a cartoon, as seen above), but maybe now they could get Tom Cruise in one of these movies or something.

No writer or director is currently attached to the project, but surely there’s somebody out there who wants to make a superhero movie—even if it is one about a janitor who falls into a vat of toxic waste. That means this is unrelated to the last attempt to remake The Toxic Avenger, which had one of the directors of Sausage Party on board.