Toxic Avenger Going the Way of Many Remakes

According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, The Toxic Avenger is being remade as a family friendly movie. Here is the original story:

Get ready for a movie makeover for The Toxic Avenger, the anti-hero who became the beachhead mutant in a Troma Films schlock heyday that included such 1980s classics as Surf Nazis Must Die, Rabid Grannies and Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator. Toxie, as the mop-wielding character is affectionately called, is at the center of a remake deal for a film that will be produced by Akiva Goldsman, Richard Saperstein and Charlie Corwin. Corwin's Original Media, a partnership with Dutch reality TV giant Endemol, has financed the acquisition of rights to a franchise that includes four sequels, an animated TV series and comic books. Original Media will finance the development of a script, with writers to be hired shortly.

The group intends to turn Toxie into a green superhero for these environmentally conscious times.

The original film was directed by Troma founders Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz and has become something of a campy classic. It revolved around Tromaville Health Club mop boy Melvin, a gentle wimp whose trusting ways made him easy prey for gym thugs and eventually got him immersed in a vat of toxic waste. The radioactive swill transformed Melvin into Toxie, a misshapen superhero who wreaks havoc on polluters in New Jersey and whose improved muscle tone improved his standing with the chicks. The remake will be mounted as a family friendly PG-13 action comedy akin to The Mask, which Saperstein worked on when he was a New Line exec. It's his second Troma remake property, as Saperstein is teamed with Brett Ratner on a Mother's Day redo that was directed by Darren Bousman

Now, a lot of people are mad by this and they have every right to. But the way I look at it is: This will give Troma more exposure. So what if the remake is PG-13? That doesn't mean that the movie won't be good. It probably won't be, but the movie might be a big hit and then people will want to see the original. Then people will start looking at Troma and we as the fans might benefit from this. I see a lot of bad things coming from this, but I also see a lot of good things too. We'll see what happens.