Who could forget the Toxic Avenger, the 1984 splatter film that your ecofreaky  parents still drool over—not to mention a franchise that spawned four sequels, a stage production, a kids’ cartoon series, and a Marvel comic book?

Now, thanks to Legendary Productions, which acquired rights to the property in 2018, this midnight cult classic is being rebooted for a new generation of climate-change groupies with the addition of 14-year-old Jacob Tremblay to the cast.

  Macon Blair will write and direct the remake, whose lineup is already headlined with Game of Thrones player Peter Dinklage in the title role. 

Tremblay is a Canadian-born actor who made his film debut in 2015, receiving much critical acclaim for his portrayal of Jack Newsom in Room.  He followed this up two years later when he starred as August Pullman in Stephen Chbosky’s film Wonder, about a physically challenged youngster.  In  2019, he played one of the leads in Gene Stupnitsky’s debut offering, Good Boys. He’d also played a supporting role in the 2016 parody flick Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, directed by Jeremy Konner.

The original Toxic Avenger release – appropriately in the Orwellian year of 1984 – tracked the odyssey of a mild-mannered janitor in Tromaville, New Jersey who acquires superhuman powers after falling into a vat of toxic waste.  Fans of this cult classic are  already  abuzz, wondering  whether the reboot might make a timely reference to the coronavirus pandemic.