Macon Blair is reviv­ing the decay­ing Tox­ic Avenger franchise

Do you smell that waft­ing aro­ma of rot­ting flesh, putres­cent mop buck­et flu­id, and chem­i­cal waste? Don’t both­er sniff-check­ing your­self – the Tox­ic Avenger is close at hand.

Vari­ety has bro­ken the news that actor/​writer/​director/​king of the home­spun DIY thriller Macon Blair will take the helm of a new reboot of the Tox­ic Avenger cult-film fran­chise. With a more size­able bud­get and the over­sight of upstand­ing stu­dio Leg­endary, it’s expect­ed to be a slight­ly more pro­fes­sion­al take on mate­r­i­al steeped in imma­tu­ri­ty and incompetence.

The flag­ship prop­er­ty from Z‑grade pro­duc­tion house Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the behe­moth known to his many fans as ​“Tox­ie” has grown into an icon for the stu­dio that spawned him, his acid-scarred face now a logo syn­ony­mous with the best of low-bud­get trash cinema.

The übern­erd born Melvin Ferd top­pled into a bar­rel of radioac­tive sludge as the result of a prank gone wrong, mutat­ing into the super-strong, super-hard-to-look-at crime­fight­er known as the Tox­ic Avenger. Because Melvin was wear­ing a tutu at the time of the inci­dent (long sto­ry, don’t ask, doesn’t mat­ter), Tox­ie also wears a tutu. Because Melvin worked as a jan­i­tor, Tox­ie wields a mop.

Tox­ie inspired four films, a com­ic book series, a car­toon, and a stage musi­cal, along with a legion of diehard fans com­mit­ted to its dumpy aes­thet­ic and sopho­moric phi­los­o­phy. His cre­ators, Tro­ma god­fa­thers Lloyd Kauf­man and Michel Herz, will work on the new film as pro­duc­ers to ensure that the inef­fa­ble Tox­ie-ness is not lost.

Blair is a good fit for the job, a con­nois­seur of genre detri­tus who’s proven him­self capa­ble of assum­ing a giv­en tone across the fea­tures he’s writ­ten (such as Hold the Dark, for fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Jere­my Saulnier) and direct­ed (the Sun­dance smash I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore).

The only ques­tion will be how much of the gross-out idio­cy that made the orig­i­nal an under­ground phe­nom­e­non Leg­endary will allow Blair to glop on. Regard­less, bring­ing the Tox­ic Avenger back to the­aters from direct-to-video pur­ga­to­ry con­sti­tutes a win in and of itself.