The Toxic Avenger had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, and director Macon Blair revealed a surprising piece of info to Bloody Disgusting during a post-screening interview.
Peter Dinklage plays a pre-transformation Winston Gooze in the upcoming remake, but we were under the impression that the Game of Thrones star would also bring the titular Toxic Avenger to life under the grotesque prosthetics.
However, Blair has now confirmed that it's actually a completely different actor.
“It’s not Peter,” the filmmaker explains. “It’s a tiny British actress named Luisa Guerreiro. She’s Portuguese. A complete badass. 110 degrees, 30 pounds of foam makeup. Motors all over her face to move the eyebrows and stuff like that."
As it turns out, Dinklage did perform all of Toxie's scenes on tape so that Guerreiro could memorize his voice inflections and movements for the movie.
"What she did was, and this is why I get so excited talking about it, Peter performed the whole movie on videotape as Toxie. Just himself. But making the choices, delivering the lines, physical choices, how fast he’s running all of it. There’s a video version of him just in a white room playing the whole movie. Luisa takes those tapes home, memorizes them, and studies them. She plays Teletubbies and Oompa Loompas. She’s like a physical performer. So, she’s studying his gait and his timing, his pauses, his line delivery, all of that. She replicates that on set, and then Peter, six months later, comes back and reinterprets the voice based on what she did. So, Toxie is actually Luisa playing Peter with Peter’s voice playing Luisa.”
So, that recently leaked first look at Toxie (which we've since had to delete), wasn't actually Dinklage after all! But you can see the actor as Winston along with his supporting cast in these promo stills.
“While the original film (which 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 awry, Macon Blair’s contemporary take follows a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength all his own.
Peter Dinklage stars as downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze who, after falling into a vat of toxic waste, becomes none other than The Toxic Avenger. This timely reimagining is up to its eyeballs in environmental themes as Winston goes up against the evil forces of greed and corruption to save his son, his friends, and his community. Even as this story exists on its 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 – as per Troma tradition.”
The Toxic Avenger was first introduced in the 1984 movie of the same name from indie studio Troma Entertainment, and has since gone on to achieve cult status with several sequels, a comic book series and even a short-lived 1991 children's animated show called The Toxic Crusaders.
No theatrical release date has been announced.