THE TOXIC AVENGER remake director reveals Toxie’s design was originally ‘more monstrous’

There’s been a lot of buzz on the internet about Legendary’s upcoming remake of Troma’s The toxic avenger. The teaser trailer that was released seemed to generate some excitement. We have yet to see a full reveal of Toxie. The only footage we’ve seen of him features the “strange folk hero” shrouded in shadow.

Director Macon Blair recently talked about Toxie’s design and revealed that his original redesign for his film was even more monstrous and looked like “a zombie.” While speaking with Collider, Blair shared:

“You know what? He started out much more – what’s one way to put it – more zombie-like, more rotten and much more monstrous. We went through a series, right when we were in the art phase, and we had a couple of really great artists , one was called Vanessa Menendez and the other was called Jonas McCluggage, he’s a comic book artist, she’s a painter. I was really exploring some real Night of the Living Dead style looks and then we agreed we gave a second look at this and as we went along, we tried to humanize him a little more so that even though he has all these pimples, I’m not sure if people will have seen the movie when they watch it or not,” but It’s not a spoiler that he looks disgusting: he has pimples and warts and blisters, he has a super dilated eye, but you can still see a lot of humanity inside. And so we pushed the monster side of things really far and then I brought it back.”

While it looks intriguing, I’m still curious about the design actually used in the film, the design we haven’t seen yet. In a previous interview, it was revealed that Toxie is played by two different actors. Peter Dinklage plays the character Winston Gooze before he transforms into Toxie, and voices the character and an actress named Luisa Guerreiro it’s the person with the mask and costume. She is described as “a real badass. 110 degrees, 30 pounds of foam makeup. Motors all over the face to move the eyebrows and things like that.”

Dinklage performed all of Toxie’s scenes on tape so that Guerreiro could memorize his voice inflections and movements for the film. The director went on to explain how they went about bringing Toxie to life:

“What he did was, and this is why I’m so excited to talk about it, Peter played the entire movie on videotape as Toxie. Just himself. But making the choices, saying the lines, the physical choices , how fast he’s running, all that. There’s a video version of him in a white room playing the entire movie. Luisa takes those tapes home and memorizes them and studies them. He plays the Teletubbies and the Oompa Loompas. He’s like a physical artist. So she studies her gait and her timing, her pauses, her line, all of that. She replicates it on set, and then Peter, six months later, comes back and reinterprets the voice based on that which he did. So, Toxie is actually Luisa playing Peter with the voice of Peter playing Luisa.

Here is the description of the film:

While the original film (premiered in 1984, almost 40 years ago!) followed the fate of Melvin Ferd Junko III (Mitch Cohen), who goes from zero to toxic hero in a case of bullying gone wrong, the contemporary version by Macon Blair follows a horribly deformed creature of superhuman size and strength all its own.

Peter Dinklage plays downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze who, after falling into a vat of toxic waste, becomes none other than The Toxic Avenger. This timely retelling lives up to its environmental themes as Winston battles the evil forces of greed and corruption to save his son, his friends, and his community. While this story exists on his own terms, the spirit undoubtedly remains connected to the original. Troma fans old and new will be pleased to know that the film has been rated “R” for violence and gore, per Troma tradition.

The film is also the protagonist Elijah Wood, Julia Davis, Taylor Paige, Kevin BaconAND Jacob Tremblay. There is no release date yet.

We’ll likely see some early concept designs once the film hits theaters, but for now fans would be happy with just one clear look at Toxie!

Although Dinklage provided the voice, Blair previously revealed that a British actress named Luisa Guerreiro is actually under the mounds of prosthetics.