In the 15-year-long glut of big-budget superhero movies, parodies of the genre have been few and far between Sure, Superhero Movie counts, but that wasn’t exactly the take-down of the powerful genre that it could have been. Perhaps audiences are still too high on Iron Men to accept a goofy send-up of such a character. It may be a while before audiences are treated to a character like Captain Klutz, Slapstick, or Forbush Man. At least Guardians of the Galaxy contained a nod to Howard the Duck. And, yes, Deadpool mercifully undid a lot of seriousness.
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But the next big superhero spoof is on the horizon, and it has a director, as reported by Variety. Conrad Vernon, one of the directors of the recent hit (and critical success) Sausage Party has been selected to helm a remake of Troma’s schlocky 1984 low-budget cult hit The Toxic Avenger. The original tagline: “The first super-hero …from New Jersey!”
For those unfamiliar with The Toxic Avenger, it is about a New Jersey teenager who stumbles into a pool of toxic waste and becomes a hideous mutant with crime-fighting superpowers. Toxic ooze, you may notice, was a common motif in the 1980s (the Ninja Turtles, Garbage Pail Kids, Madballs, and others, all encountered ooze). The film spawned three sequels (and an announced fourth), a stage musical, and a short-lived animated TV series.
The remake of The Toxic Avenger will be executive produced by Troma bigwigs Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz (who also wrote and directed the original), and a screenplay is currently being re-written by the team behind the animated TV show Archer.
Top Image: Troma Entertainment
Witney Seibold is a longtime contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
