If you’ve been missing Peter Dinklage since Game Of Thrones finished, 2022 has treats in store – he’ll be back in two radically different roles in the coming months. First up, he takes the title role in Joe Wright’s musical Cyrano as a duellist / poet / science fiction writer / soldier / lover (Cyrano De Bergerac didn’t mess about). Then he’s going to appear in The Toxic Avenger, based on the 1984 Troma cult classic – and he promises something very different than we’ve seen from him in the past.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Dinklage tells Empire in The Batman issue. “I just wanted to do something that I’ve never done before. So why not be a monster in an over-the-top, crazy movie, and why not sing in another one?” The original film saw a janitor, bullied by customers at the health club where he worked, fall into a vat of toxic goo and emerge super strong but hideously deformed. He uses his newfound size to protect the innocent and fight crime – despite the efforts of the authorities to stop him for their own corrupt ends.
So will this new film be in the same deranged and depraved Troma mould as the original? “Yes,” says Dinklage. “It’s not a remake. I just like guerrilla filmmaking. Those movies – they just made them, no matter what. They just did it because they love doing it. Some of them are not the best, but some are so much fun. When you make movies too clean, it can distance the audience. They want to feel the dirt under their fingernails. I think those Troma films definitely dipped the audience in toxic waste.”
Cyrano hits cinemas on January 14, with The Toxic Avenger following later next year. To read more from Dinklage, check out the new issue of Empire, on sale now – order a copy online here.