Emmy and Golden Globe winner Peter Dinklage has found his next headlining role in an unlikely place: at the bottom of a barrel of toxic waste.

Dinklage has signed on as the star of Legendary Entertainment’s reboot of The Toxic Avenger, the low-budget, sort-of superhero flick that put Troma Entertainment on the map back in 1984.

The first Toxic Avenger was about a milquetoast janitor named Melvin who becomes disfigured after falling into a vat of toxic goo and goes on to battle baddies. Toxic Avenger went on to be Troma’s biggest hit, and Toxie, as the character was known, became a mascot for the company.

The new movie is said to be a contemporary reimagining of the original, with a nod to the quirky subversiveness of Deadpool, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Macon Blair, whose previous credits include the Sundance film I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore, will direct.

Deadline reports that the film’s logline is “when a struggling everyman is pushed into a vat of toxic waste, he is transformed into a mutant freak who must go from shunned outcast to underdog hero as he races to save his son, his friends and his community from the forces of corruption and greed.” 

Troma founders Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, director of the original, are producing the new version. Legendary previously reported that its take will be milder in tone and it might have a PG-13 rating instead of the R earned by the original. 

Dinklage starred as quippy anti-hero Tyron Lannister from 2011-19 on HBO’s Game of Thrones, and earned numerous awards there. He’s no stranger to superhero flicks: he had a small role in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and played an antagonist in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). He is currently in production on director Joe Wright’s Cyrano.

The Toxic Avenger gained cult and then hit status after a long run as a midnight movie in New York City, leading to sequels like The Toxic Avenger Part II, and several more. The property also became a stage musical production, a children’s cartoon TV series and a Marvel comic, putting Dinklage once again in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

No release date has been announced.