The Toxic Avenger Director Rejects 2024’s “Unreleasable” Report

Macon Blair has had a charmed run since 2013’s Cannes Film Festival. 

That’s when he and childhood best friend Jeremy Saulnier turned heads with their micro-budget revenge thriller, Blue Ruin. In 2015, Saulnier directed Blair in yet another critically acclaimed thriller known as Green Room. The following year, Blair moved into the director’s chair on I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which landed the dramatic grand jury prize at 2017’s Sundance Film Festival. Blair and Saulnier would then link back up for the latter’s 2018 film, Hold the Dark, which counted Blair as screenwriter and actor.

The current decade is when the fortunes would temporarily change for the producing partners at Bonneville Pictures. In 2020, the pandemic would help turn Saulnier’s latest film, Rebel Ridge, into a five-year crucible, while Blair started to assemble his reboot of Troma Entertainment’s 1984 cult hit, The Toxic Avenger. The first person he thought for the title character of “Toxie” was Peter Dinklage. The pair struck up a friendship after Dinklage served on the Sundance jury that honored Blair’s feature directorial debut in 2017.

Their superhero splatter film about a janitor (Dinklage’s Winston Gooze) who’s had enough of the corporate malfeasance around him, would go on to shoot in mid-2021. It then hit the festival circuit in the fall of 2023 to nearly universal acclaim. However, the road to distribution hit an unexpected snag. A report eventually circulated in mid-2024, citing an anonymous producer who described the film as “unreleasable” due to its niche tone of black comedy and gore, a Troma trademark.

Blair rejects this report for the simple fact that his production company, Legendary Pictures, was in active negotiations at the time of said report. (Troma Entertainment is also a co-producer on the project.)

“When that headline came out, Legendary was still in ongoing conversations with multiple places, so it wasn’t unreleasable. It took a minute, for sure, but that was an exaggeration that got out of hand,” Blair tells The Hollywood Reporter.

In January 2025, fresh off the massive success of Terrifier 3, Cineverse acquired the distribution rights for The Toxic Avenger. Blair’s film, which is now certified fresh via Rotten Tomatoes, would receive a marketing push that included its recent appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, as well as this weekend’s theatrical release. The Virginia native never lost faith that his film would see the light of day, but in a time where movies like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme are permanently or temporarily buried for tax benefits, he couldn’t help but have some dark nights of the soul. 

“It breaks my heart, but you hear stories about movies like [Coyote vs. Acme or Batgirl] that get vanished, so it’s hard not to have that cross your mind a little bit,” Blair admits. “But I knew that the folks at Legendary were so passionate about it that [burying the film for a tax write-off] was not on the table for them. I was still nervously thinking, ‘Oh shit, it’s taking a little bit longer than I would like.’ But I had faith that they were going to figure it out sooner or later, and they did.”

During Blair’s distribution struggles, he had many conversations with Saulnier amid his own production hurdles on Rebel Ridge. Like The Toxic Avenger, Rebel Ridge also had a happy ending that included widespread critical acclaim and a star-making turn by Aaron Pierre. Blair’s role as J. Robert Oppenheimer’s lawyer in Christopher Nolan’s best picture-winning Oppenheimer ultimately prevented him from appearing in Rebel Ridge. But as Saulnier’s producing partner, he, too, was named as part of the Netflix film’s recent Emmy nomination for outstanding “television movie.”

“There were those [cathartic] conversations [throughout our five years’ worth of setbacks]. I know it was hard for [Saulnier], just as it was hard for us to juggle this period of [The Toxic Avenger] being in limbo,” Blair recalls. “But at the end of the day, he came out of it with one of the best movies of the year, and I got to have a release with Cineverse. The Toxic Avenger is going to be in theaters, and it’s going to fucking Comic-Con. This is well beyond my expectations for this movie.”

Due to production on his next directorial effort, Blair, as an actor, is about to miss his second consecutive Saulnier film, but he’ll still be an EP on October, his friend’s Halloween-set fugitive thriller for A24.

“I’m going to be working on my own movie that’s going to be shooting at the same time,” Blair says. “We still talk all the time, we still have a company together and we’re still brothers. So at some point we’ll do something together again, but probably not October.”

Below, during a conversation with THR that predated late July’s San Diego Comic-Con, Blair also discusses why he didn’t turn his Toxic Avenger into another trendy legacy sequel.

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You initially screened The Toxic Avenger at Fantastic Fest in September of 2023. The reactions and reviews were nearly universally positive. What happened or didn’t happen from there?

Well, we had one more really dope screening at Beyond Fest in L.A. It had a very similar audience vibe, and they really loved it too. So I came out of that thinking, “Oh, we can skate into some kind of distribution deal.” But I should have known better. 

I don’t know what the actual particulars were; I was not involved in the day-to-day conversations. I know Legendary, the studio that produced it, worked really, really hard. They chased the property and partnered with Troma to begin with, and they were totally behind it through all of production and post. So I know they were trying to get it going, but for whatever reason, it just didn’t work for the usual mainstream outlets. I never got any particulars. I was never told anything specific. It was just not what they were looking for. 

But in that interim, Cineverse got to a place where they could really put their arms around it. And when they came on board, it was really exciting because they weren’t saying, “Oh, this is something that we have to just get out there. We’ll put it on a streaming platform where it’ll vanish.” They’ve been able to get the movie out there in a very enthusiastic way, which includes a theatrical component. So I’m delighted, and the couple of years of waiting ended up being totally worth it. 

Due to the film’s tone, words like “unreleasable” and “unmarketable” were thrown out there. Were you ever asked to reopen the hood of the movie and create another cut?

No, not at all. When I saw that headline that said it’s “unreleasable,” it made it sound like it was so gross that it’s unreleasable. And in a way, that helps gets people interested, but it’s not that fucking movie. It’s a gentle R-rated movie. It’s not that extreme. So cutting sections out of it wouldn’t have really changed it anyway, and I think the mainstream outlets were just not digging the vibe of it. But I never got the sense that it was too extreme or the content needed to be reined in. At any rate, nobody ever suggested that to me, and I don’t think it would’ve changed anything, really. 

I think that “unreleasable” quote was a game of telephone that got out of hand. I suspect that somebody somewhere was like, “It’s having a hard time getting distributed,” and then somebody else extrapolated that it’s unreleasable or something like that. Even when that headline came out, Legendary was still in ongoing conversations with multiple places, so it wasn’t unreleasable. It took a minute, for sure, but that was an exaggeration that got out of hand.

Did you ever completely lose faith that it would see the light of day?

No, but I did get worried. It breaks my heart, but you hear stories about movies like [Coyote vs. Acme or Batgirl] that get vanished, so it’s hard not to have that cross your mind a little bit. But I knew that the folks at Legendary — specifically the executive that I was working with, Alex Garcia — were so passionate about it that [burying the film for a tax write-off] was not on the table for them. I was still nervously thinking, “Oh shit, it’s taking a little bit longer than I would like,” but I knew that they were still working really hard on it. So I had faith that they were going to figure it out sooner or later, and they did.

As you touched on, Cineverse, the distributor of Terrifier 3, ultimately picked it up for a theatrical release. They helped prove that there’s still a theatrical demand for risqué genre films. Do you also credit Terrifier 3’s success for your film finally being released?

I don’t know the specifics, but in my opinion, that’s absolutely what happened. I think Terrifier 3 blew up to such a degree that it gave Cineverse some juice. And not only that, they also learned how to market this kind of movie. Now, Terrifier 3 is much more in the gore zone. That’s way, way beyond what we’re doing here, so it’s not the same thing. But as far as a movie that’s not necessarily mainstream, that’s totally what they’re good at. So they proved that they could do a really successful release with that movie, and it just made sense for them to step into this one. So [Terrifier 3] set the stage for our movie, and I’m grateful.

Your Toxic Avenger is a reimagining, not a legacy sequel. Your characters don’t seek out someone from the original movie for guidance. Was that legacy sequel trend never of interest to you?

It was less a matter of not wanting it to be a legacy sequel. I actually didn’t think of it in those terms. It was more about what I wanted the emotional center of the movie to be. In the 1984 Toxic Avenger, bullies are picking on a teenager, and he’s trying to connect with girls. It was a little more adolescent, so they nailed that. The question, when you do remakes, is: Why are we doing this at all? And my answer was that it would feel redundant if we just did that exact same thing again where a bullied teenager is working at a health club and trying to get with girls.

So, in one of the very early conversations that I had with the producers, I said that the main character should be an older guy who’s dealing with something emotional between him and his kid. And his name shouldn’t be Melvin [like Mitch Cohen’s main character in the 1984 film]. I felt he should be an all-new guy [and an all-new Toxic Avenger] in the same way that you’ve got different Captain Americas. They’re all Captain America, but they’re different people. So I thought about it as an all-new version of a familiar character that the fans love.

Making a Troma movie in the 2020s is likely very different from the ‘80s and ‘90s. You still have plenty of their hallmarks, don’t get me wrong, but was it understood from the start that you’d have to dial back certain ingredients, mainly sex and nudity? 

No, if we had wanted to have more of that in there, we could have done it. But I didn’t want to have it in there just because we felt like we owed it. We also only had 90 minutes, and we couldn’t have unlimited characters. And if Winston’s main thing is dealing with his son, there wasn’t a lot of space for shower scenes and stuff like that. So it was not a matter of us not being allowed to do this or that now. Legendary had a pretty free hand, and they were like, “You can do whatever you want.” It was more about what fit with the flow of the story. 

In 1984, pre-internet, nudity had a different place in culture. A 12-year-old kid would watch a movie and freeze-frame on a shower scene or something like that. But it’s very different these days when there’s gigabytes upon gigabytes of hardcore porn on your phone. So it was like, “Why are we doing this? Is it to be sexy or titillating? Who gives a fuck? Is it actually part of the story?” The one time we did do it was with some flashers at the concert, and the point of it was to specifically be a joke, as opposed to something that’s arousing.

After Toxic Avenger, Peter Dinklage made Brothers, which you co-wrote. You also appeared in his film The Thicket. How much of this was by design? 

When my first movie played at a film festival [Sundance] in 2017, he was there [as a juror] and he saw it. So he very kindly invited me out to lunch just to chitchat about movies, and he was like, “Hey, I liked your movie.” It was very nice. So we ended up staying in touch, and he would send me scripts from time to time. He would ask, “Do you have any thoughts about this?” It was not necessarily to make it, but just to talk about scripts. I would then send him scripts and ask, “Do you like this?” 

So that avenue of conversation is why I got him in my head to play Winston in The Toxic Avenger. We were already talking, and it was the same thing with the other two. He was working on Brothers, and they wanted to do a new draft of the script, so he sent it to me. And then he was working on The Thicket when he recommended me to the director, Elliott Lester. So it all came out of that initial little lunch conversation that we had at [Sundance] eight years ago.

The title of your first movie, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, was relevant in 2017, and it’s especially relevant now. 

Ooh boy.

Have you given any thought to a sequel of sorts? 

As a matter of fact, we’ve talked about that. Making that movie was such a special time with that group. We still have a text thread that we started back then with the whole cast, and everybody is always checking in with each other. When things are going great, we’re checking in. When things are not going great, we’re checking in. 

So that idea has come up a couple of times, and it just feels like there’s a way where we could see what Ruth [Melanie Lynskey] and Tony [Elijah Wood] are up to now and have another fun little adventure. It’s never really gotten serious yet, but it’s something I would like to do at some point. So I wouldn’t say I have any active plans for it, but it is something we talk about imaginatively amongst ourselves. We talk about it quite a bit.

Between The Toxic Avenger and Jeremy Saulnier’s most recent movie, Rebel Ridge, you both got put through the wringer in a wide variety of ways. Did you guys have lots of cathartic phone calls the last five years?

Yeah, of course. Jeremy’s was different. His movie shut down for COVID, and then it got shut down for a hurricane. Then there was a casting switch-up and everything. So, yes, there were those conversations, but then there’s the other side of it. He had to go through that to wind up with Aaron Pierre and an amazing movie. I know it was hard for him, just as it was hard for us to juggle this period of [The Toxic Avenger] being in limbo. 

But at the end of the day, he came out of it with one of the best movies of the year, in my opinion, and I got to have a release with Cineverse. The Toxic Avenger is going to be in theaters, and it’s going to fucking Comic-Con. This is well beyond my expectations for this movie, and if waiting a couple years to get there is part of it, then that’s cool. [Writer’s Note: This interview was conducted prior to late July’s San Diego Comic-Con.]

Rebel Ridge may have been my favorite film of 2024, but your physical presence was still missed. I half-jokingly asked Jeremy if Oppenheimer has now made you out of reach. Are you going to appear in his upcoming A24 thriller titled October?

I’m not in his next one. The Oppenheimer effect was that I was literally working on Oppenheimer at the time [of Rebel Ridge]. Jeremy’s movie started and stopped a couple of times, and there was a moment where he was like, “Can you come and play this part?” But I couldn’t because I was literally working on Oppenheimer. 

I would drop everything and pay money to be in Jeremy’s movies. So it’s not at all a matter of me being beyond them, but I’m not going to be in his new one. I’m going to be working on my own movie that’s going to be shooting at the same time. We still talk all the time, we still have a company together and we’re still brothers. So at some point we’ll do something together again, but probably not October. 

Post-Blue Ruin, if somebody told you that you’d be too busy to be in one of Jeremy’s movies, would you have scoffed at such a notion?

Yes, I would’ve scoffed. It would’ve seemed unlikely. We joke about trying to get our schedules figured out so that we can be more together. We joke about trying to get our schedules in sync that way, but so far we haven’t been able to do it. If you’re able to get a movie up and running, it’s so precarious that you can’t just pause production for six months. When it’s ready to go, you have to pounce on the opportunity, and that’s what happened here.

Lastly, I have a very specific Blue Ruin question for you. At the end, Dwight (Blair) tells William (David W. Thompson) to wipe the gun and leave it behind. But we later see a shot of William tossing the gun without wiping it. Do you think he eventually got picked up and charged?

Wow! This is the first time I’ve ever heard that question, and I’ve never considered it. But since you ask, no, I don’t. The reason why is because, for me, what makes the ending impactful is that Dwight gave his life in order to end that cycle of violence. And if William did get arrested and he spent the rest of his life in jail, then it would make what Dwight did meaningless to some degree. His whole thing was to try and help that innocent kid get out of this situation. So I like to think from a hopeful point of view that, palm or fingerprints on the weapon aside, it was able to happen.

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The Toxic Avenger is now playing in movie theaters.