Toxic Avenger First Look Images Reveal Peter Dinklage’s Hero, Kevin Bacon’s Bigwig and a Creepy Elijah Wood.

Fans of The Toxic Avenger have been waiting patiently to get a first look at the remake of the low-budget 1984 Troma movie of the same name, and now Entertainment Weekly have shared images of Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon and an almost unrecognisable Elijah Wood in Macon Blair’s upcoming release.

Having been teased earlier in the year, The Toxic Avenger is set to get its world premiere at the opening night of Austin’s Fantastic Fest this week, and will certainly draw a lot of attention when it arrives. The core of the story remains the same as the original movie, with a put-upon janitor Winston Gooze being transformed into a horrifying super-strong super hero after being exposed to a barrel of toxic waste. Wearing a tutu and wielding a mop with deadly accuracy, Toxie goes about becoming the mighty avenger that his former self could never have been. Blair suggested that the main core of the movie will not mess too much with the tried and tested formula of the original movie. He said:

“There is a terrible industrial accident that renders him a mutant and an outcast, but also gives him some super strength and super abilities that sets him on a path of being an unlikely vigilante in this downward-spiraling society. Similar to the original Toxic Avenger, he’s singularly unqualified to be a hero. He’s not especially brave, he’s not especially crafty, but he has his heart in the right place, and he starts taking it to the limit when he’s pushed into a corner.”

The new images include a shot of Peter Dinklage’s Winston Gooze at a party, seemingly just prior to the aforementioned accident that turns him into Toxie, and a previous image gives a shadowed tease of his transformed vigilante, but the final reveal of the design of the central character is yet to be revealed. Blair teased that the inspiration behind the design is mostly taken from some of Troma’s Toxic Avenger sequels.

“His look is closer to that, and in terms of color palette we drew from the cartoon actually,” the director says. “But it’s practical effects. You can see all the goopy little boils and stuff like that. And we definitely stayed true to some of the really iconic elements: the tutu that’s melted onto his body, the janitor’s mop as his super weapon.”

Related: How Elijah Wood Has Made the Horror Genre Better

Elijah Wood Makes A Creepy Villain in The Toxic Avenger

Having frequently played the good guy in movie’s Elijah Wood brings his creepy best to The Toxic Avenger as the villainous Fritz Garbinger. The Lord of the Rings star is more Gollum than Frodo this time around, as the new images show. For Blair, the character is very much a cross between “Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Danny DeVito Penguin.” He explained of the reimagined bad guy:

“The look came about by discussions I had with our designers and with Elijah himself. I wanted it to feel like a Peter Sellers type of performance where he just goes invisible. The idea is that you forget that it’s the Elijah that you know from Lord of the Rings or anything else.”

Director Blair describes Fritz as the “runt” brother of Kevin Bacon’s corporate bigwig, Bob Garbinger, a Lex Luthor style character, “where they have all this money and resources at their disposal, but he’s just kind of a disaster.” According to Blair, Fritz acts a henchman for his brother’s corporation, teaming up with a “gang of dangerous lunatics” collectively known as Killer Nutz, a musical group with violent tendencies.

The Toxic Avenger is certainly shaping up to be a treat for both fans and newcomers to the Toxie franchise. There is currently no general release date set for the movie, but with the premiere coming in the next week, a trailer and first reactions will not be too far behind.