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ROHAN: What was your relationship to The Toxic Avenger before signing on\u2014and how did this remake first land on your radar? Was it something you always knew you wanted to remake?<\/p>\n
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MACON: It never occurred to me that I needed to remake it. It never crossed my mind. But I saw the movie when I was in about sixth grade, and it was really inspirational and impactful at the time. Beyond it being hilarious and wild to watch, this was right around when my buddies and I got a VHS camera and started figuring out how to make our own movies. It felt homemade\u2014like friends making a movie together and doing the makeup themselves. I didn\u2019t realize it then, but it was independent filmmaking, and it was my first exposure to that. Years later, Legendary asked a bunch of writers to pitch on a remake, and I thought: if we do it, let\u2019s take it back to those scrappy movies we made in seventh grade\u2014but with a big studio behind it. That turned into a directing job and it went from there. It was really about recapturing the spirit we felt watching it as thirteen-year-olds.<\/p>\n
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ROHAN: You\u2019ve called it \u201ca sweet story underneath all the goopiness.\u201d How did you balance that\u00a0emotional father-son dynamic between Peter Dinklage and Jacob Tremblay with the outrageous gore and absurd humor?<\/p>\n
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MACON: The goal was to keep the tone of the original without repeating the exact story beats. So instead of him just trying to get a girlfriend like in the original, his emotional issue is about relating to his foster kid. On the page that made sense, but it\u2019s surrounded by insane stuff\u2014falling into toxic waste, getting muscles\u2014lots of cartoonish chaos at the edges. The key was getting actors like Peter and Jacob, who played it totally straight, not like they were in a comedy. They treated it dramatically, and that gave everything a real emotional heart so the craziness around the periphery didn\u2019t get too silly. I don\u2019t think it would\u2019ve worked without them doing that, and I\u2019m very grateful for it.<\/p>\n
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ROHAN: You make great use of practical effects in this film, especially with Toxie’s look and several other characters, including Elijah Wood’s. How long did those designs take to realize and what was the application process on shoot days?<\/p>\n
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MACON: For Elijah\u2019s look, the application was maybe an hour and a half, two hours\u2014faster as we went. We did one or two design versions and settled quickly; I was after a kind of Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe, a little Danny DeVito as The Penguin energy. The early sketch is almost identical to what the makeup became, so that one was quick.<\/p>\n
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Toxie was the opposite\u2014we did many versions. Some were extremely monstrous and zombie-like, with melting flesh and exposed\u2026stuff\u2014very gross. We went back to a more approachable version, borrowing from the cartoon and comic, a little from the original movie, and then we incorporated some of Peter\u2019s facial features. We wanted a classic monster with enough humanity that people could be friends with him instead of terrified. That ended up being multiple facial pieces with motors, plus arms and legs. Early on it took about three hours; by the end they got it down to around two and a half. Pretty involved.<\/p>\n
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ROHAN: Have you thought about where a follow-up could go?<\/p>\n
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MACON: Oh, yeah\u2014I\u2019ve definitely thought about ideas. There have been no conversations and I don\u2019t know of any plans right now, but if someone asked, I\u2019ve got notions we kicked around while filming. Who knows?<\/p>\n
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ROHAN: I know the film had a little trouble finding distribution initially, was there something in the movie\u00a0that was deemed too gnarly for audiences and had to be removed or was it something else?<\/p>\n
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MACON: To my knowledge there was no hang-up because it was \u201ctoo gnarly.\u201d It\u2019s not that gnarly\u2014the worst episode of Game of Thrones is more hardcore. I always treated it as a comedy; there\u2019s a little blood, but it\u2019s not meant to be a total gross-out. I wonder if, because Terrifier is with Cineverse, people assumed this would be the same level. It\u2019s totally not. I suspect the delay was more about tone than gore\u2014it\u2019s different from what people expect, and it can be hard to market as crowd-pleasing. Cineverse saw it and recognized it is crowd-pleasing and could market it that way, which made them a great partner. But no\u2014there wasn\u2019t a \u201cwe can\u2019t release this\u201d situation. It\u2019s a regular old R-movie.<\/p>\n
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When a downtrodden janitor, Winston Gooze, is exposed to a catastrophic toxic accident, he\u2019s transformed into a new kind of hero: The Toxic Avenger. Now, Toxie must rise from outcast to savior, taking on ruthless corporate overlords and corrupt forces who threaten his son, his friends, and his community. In a world where greed runs rampant\u2026 justice is best served radioactive.<\/p>\n
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