‘The Toxic Avenger’ Filmmaker MAcon Blair Rejects 2024’s “Unreleasable” Report, Talks Cathartic Phone Calls with Jeremy Saulnier

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MAcon Blair Has Had A Charmed Run Since 2013’s Cannes Film Festival.

That’s WHEN HE AND CHILDHDKOOOD BEST FRIEND JEREMY Saulnier Turned Heads with Their Micro-Budget Revenge Thriller, Blue ruin. In 2015, Saulnier Directed Blair in Yet Another Critical 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 anymorewhol 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 Darkwhohconted blair as screenwriter and actor.

The Current Decade Is Who The Fortunes would Temporarily Change for the Production Partners at Bonneville Pictures. In 2020, The Pandemic Willd Help Turn Saulnier’s Latest Film, Rebel RidgeInto A Five-Year Crucible, While Blair Started to Assemble his Reboot of Troma Entertainment ‘1984 Cult Hit, The Toxic Avenger. The First Person Hay 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 Goaze) Who’s Had Enough of the Corporate Malfeasance Arund HIM, WOURT GO on to Shoot in Mid-2021. ITTN HIT the Festival Circuit in the Fall of 2023 to Nearly Universal Acclaim. However, The Road to Distribution Hit an Unexpectioned Snag. A report eventually circulated in Mid-2024, Citying and Anonymous Producer Who Descripted The Film As “Unreleasable” Due to Its Niche Tone of Black Comedy and Gore, A Toma Trademark.

Blair Rejects this Report for the Simple Fact that His Production Company, Legendary Pictures, Was In Active Negotias at the Time of SAID REPORT. (Troma Entertainment is Also A CO-PRODUCER ON PROJECT.)

“WHEN THAT HEADLINE CAME OUT, Legendary Was Still in Ongoing Conversations with Multiple Places, so It Wasn’t unreleasable. Itok a minute, for Sure, But this The Hollywood Reporter.

In January 2025, Fresh Off The Massive Success of Terrifier 3Cineverse Acquired the Distribution of Rights for The Toxic Avenger. Blair’s Film, WHICH IS NOW CERTIFIED FRESH VIA Rotten Tomatoeswold Receive A Marketing Push that Included Its Recent Appeareance at San Diego Comic-Con, As Well As this Weekend’s Theatric Release. The Virginia Native Never Lost Faith That His Film Wuld See The Light of Day, But In A Time Where Movies Like Batgirl an Coyote Vs. ACME are permanely or temporiarily buried for tax benefits, he couln’t help but have a dark nights of the soul.

“It Breaks My Heart, But You Hear Stories About Movies Like[[Coyote Vs. ACME or Batgirl]that get vanisshed, so is 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 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 drawing a little bit long than i would like.’ But I Had Faith Thaty Were Going to Figure It Out Sooner or Later, and They Did. ”

Durying Blair’s Distribution Strugggles, 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 WIDSPRAD CITICAL ACCLAIM AND A STAR-MAKING TURN by AARON PIERRE. Blair’s Role As J. Robert Openheimer’s Lawyer in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-Winning Openheimer Ultimately Prevented Him from Appearing in Rebel Ridge. But as saulnier’s Production 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 camera Out of it with 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 is going to fucking comic -on. This is Well Beyond My Expectations for This Movie. ”

Due to Product on His Next Directorial Effort, Blair, As An Actor, Is About to Miss His Second ConsECumental Saulnier Film, Butlt He’ll Still Be An Ep On Octoberhis Friend’s Halloween-Set Fugitive Thriller for A24.

“I’m going to be working on my own movie that’s going to be chooting 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, Durying A Conversation with Thr that predated Late July’s San Diego Comic-Con, Blair Also Discusses WHY HE DIDNN’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 Reaction 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 La It Had A VERY SIMILAR AUDIENCE VIBE, AND WHY REALLY LOVED IT TOO. SO I CAME OUT OF THAT THINKING, “OH, WE CAN SKATE INTO Cind 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 Through All of Production and Post. So i KNOW they worse to get it going, but for whover reason, it just didn’t work for the usual Mainstream Outlets. I Never Got Any Particulars. I was Never Told Anything Special. It Was Just Not Whaty Were Looking For.

But in that interim, Cineverse Got to a Place WHERE they could Really Put their Arms Armund It. And WHEN CAME ON BOARD, IT WAS REALLY Exciting Because they Weren’t Saying, “Oh, This Is Something We Have to Just Get Out. We’l Put it. They been able to get the movie out there in a very enthusiastic way, which includes a theatric component. So i’m delighted, and the couple of years of waiting ended up up to being totally wort it.

Due to the Film’s Tone, Words Like “Unreleasable” and “Unmarketable” Were Thrown Out there. Were You Ever Asked to Ukrain the Hood of the Movie and Create Another Cut?

No, not at all. WHEN I SAW THAT HEADLINE THAT SAID IS “Unreleasable,” It Made It Sound Like It Was So Gross That Is Unreleasable. And in a Way, that Helps Gets People Interared, But It’s Not That Fucking Movie. IT’s A Gentle R-Rated Movie. It’s Not that Extreme. SO CUTTING SECTIONS OF IT Wuldnt Really Changed Ityway, and I Think The Mainstream Outletts Were Just Not Diging the Vibe of It. But I Never Got The Sense That It Was Too Extreme or The Content Need to be Reined in. AT Any Rate, Nobody Ever Suggested That To Me, And I DON’T THINK IT Wuld’ve Changed Anything, Really.

I Think that “unreleasable” quote was a game of telephone that got out out of hand. I Suspect That Somebody Somewhere Was Like, “It’s Haring A Hard Time Getting Distributed,” and THEN Somebody Else Else Extrapolated that Is 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. Itok A Minute, for Sure, But That Was An Exaggeration that Got Out of Hand.

DID YOU EVER COMPLELY LOSE FAITH THAT IT WOURT 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 vanisshed, so is hard not to have that Cross Your Mind A Little Bit. But I KNEW THAT The Folks at Legendary – Specificly 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 Wuld Like,” But I Knew that Were Were Still Working Really Hard on It. So i had faith that were going to dill it out sooner or lauter, and they did.

As you touched on, cineverse, the Distributors of Terrifier 3Ultimately Picked It Up for A Theatric 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 RELELEASED?

I don’T KNOW The SPECIFICS, BUT IN MY OPINION, THAT’S ABOSOLUTELY WHAT HAPPENED. I Think Terrifier 3 Blew Up to Such A Degree That It Gave Cinever 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. Soy they have been that Could do a realy 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 Outy 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 DIDNN’T THINK OF IT IN TOSE TERMS. It Was More About What I Wanted The Emotion Center of the Movie to Be. In the 1984 Toxic AvengerBullies Are Picking on a Teenager, and He’s Trying to Connect with Girls. IT WAS A Little More AdalesCent, soy Nailed that. The Question, WHEN YOU DO REMAKES, IS: WHY Are we doing this at all all? And my Answer was that it would would feel redundant if we just that exact Same Thing Again WHERE A BULLIED Teenager is working at a health club and TRYING TO WITH GIRS.

So, in one of the very early conversations that I have with the product, I said that the Main Character Should Be An Older Guy Who’s Dealing with Something 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 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 figrentine people. So i thorough about it as an all-new version of a familiar Character that Fans Love.

Making a Troma Movie in the 2020s is Likely Very Different from the ’80s and’ 90s. You still has a place of their hallmarks, don’t get me wrong, but would benderstood from the start that you’d have to dial backdents, Mainly sex and nudity?

No, if we have wanted to have more of that in there, we could have had Done it. But i didn’t want to have it in there is 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 allwed 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-ELD KID WOURD WATCH A MOVIE AND FREEZE-FRAME ON A SHOWER SCENE or SOMETING LIKE THAT. But Is Very Different Tese Days WHEN THERE’S GIGABYTES UPON GIGABYTES OF HARDCORE PORN ON YOUR Phone. So it was like, “Who are we doing this? Is it to be sexy or titillating? Who gives a fuck? Is it actualally part of the story?” The One Time We did do it would be with some flashers at the concert, and the point of it was to special bely be a joke, as opaped to some things.

After Toxic AvengerPeter Dinklage Made Brothers, WHICH YOU CO-Wrote. You also appeared in his film The Thicket. How Much of this was would be 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 Wuld Send Me Scripts from Time to Time. HE would Ask, “Do you have any thoroughts about this?” It Was Not Necessarily to Make It, But Just to Talk About Scripts. I would think of him scripts and ask, “do you like this?”

So that avenue of conversing 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 Brothersand 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 RECOMMENEDED ME TO The Director, Elliott Lester. So it all came out of that initial little lunch conversing that we have at [Sundance] Eight Years Ago.

The Title of your First Movie, I don’t feel at home in this world anymoreWAS RELEVANT IN 2017, AND IT’S ESPECIALLY RELEVANT NOW.

Ooh boy.

Have you given any thorough to a sequel of sorts?

As a matter of fact, we’ve ta’ve talked about that. Making that Movie Was Such A Special Time With That Group. We still have a text thread that we have a Started backdh then with the who, and everyBody is always checking in with each. 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 likes there’s a whee where we could could See see 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 actuctive plans for it, but it is something talk about Imaginatively Amongst Ourselves. We Talk About It Quite A Bit.

Between The Toxic Avenger and Jeremy Saulnier’s MOST RECENT MOVIE, Rebel Ridgeyou botth put through the writer in a wide variety of Ways. DID YOU GUYS HAVE LOTS OF CATHARTIC PHONE CALLS The LAST FIVE YEARS?

Yeah, of Course. Jemy’s Was Different. His movie shut down for covid, and then it it is got shut down for a hourricane. THEN THERE WAS A CASTING SWITCH-UP AND Everything. SO, YES, THERE Were Those Conversations, But There’s the Other Side of It. HE HAD to GOROUGH THAT TO WIND UP WITH AARON PIERRE AND 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 camera Out of the Best 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 is going to fucking comic -on. This is Well Beyond My Expectations for This Movie, and if Waiting A Couple Years to Get There Is Part of It, Thatn 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 Jemy If Openheimer HAS NOW MADE YOU OUT OF REACH. Are you going to appet October?

I’m not in his next One. The Openheimer Effect Was that i was was Literally Working on Openheimer at the time[of[ofRebel Ridge]. Jeremy’s Movie Started and Stopped A Couple of Times, and there was a moment of what he was like, “can you come and play this part?” But I Couldn’t Because i was was Literaly Working on Openheimer.

I would Drop everything and Pay Money to be in Jemy’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 chooting 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 someting Together again, but probably not October.

Post-Blue ruinif somebody told you’d be too busy to be in one of jermy’s movies, would you have Scoffed at Such A Notion?

YES, I would’ve Scoffed. It would’ve seamed unlikely. We joke about trying to get the our scredules figured out so that we have more be more. We joke about trying to get the our scredules 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 just pause Production for SIX MONTS. WHEN IS READY TO GO, YOU HAVE TO PoUNCE ON THE OPPORTUNITY, AND THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED HERE.

Lastly, I have a very special 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 With Wiping It. Do you think he evultural got picked up and charged?

Wow! This is the first time i’ve every heard that quest, and i’ve Never Considered It. But Since You Ask, No, I DON’T. The Reason Is Because, for Me, What Makes The Ending ImpactFul Is That Dwight Gave His Life In Order To End Cycle of Violence. And if William Did Get Arrested and He Spent of His Life in Jail, Then It Wound Make What Dwight Did Meaningless To Some Degree. His whohle 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.