Transgender activists cheered Tuesday's announcement that a trailer featuring real-life hate crime victims will be altered.

The outcry over director-writer Israel Luna's Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives included a protest from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

Luna says his film is supposed to be a “hilarious campy homage to the exploitation films of the 70s and 80s.”

“When a group of transgender women are violently beaten and left for dead, the violated vixens turn deadly divas,” the film's description says, then adds, “this revenge fantasy proves that it takes more than balls to get even.”

“The film, its title and its marketing misrepresent the lives of transgender women and use grotesque, exploitative depictions of violence against transgender women in ways that make light of the horrific brutality they all too often face,” GLAAD said.

Transgender activists were horrified by the film's trailer, which included references to two real-life victims: Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman who was beaten to death in 2008, and gay teenager Jorge Mercado, who was murdered last year in Puerto Rico.

On Tuesday, Luna announced he would omit the trailer's references to the victims.

In a letter addressed to transgender activist Kelli Busey, a member of the Dallas Transgender Advocates and Allies, Luna, who is based in Dallas, said the references were included to “give a disturbing reality to my film about transgender violence.”

“After listening to many of the voices in the trans-community I've realized that the association between the names at the beginning of the trailer and the content of the film in its entirety has been difficult to connect.”

“I've had time to think about it, and have decided to take their names off the beginning of the trailer,” he added.

“We are immensely relieved that Angie Zapata's horrific bludgeoning death by Allen Andrade will not be associated directly with this comedy,” Busey said on the group's website.

“However, we are still at odds with any inadvertent associations that this movie may produce with transgender people in real life,” Busey added.

The film is scheduled for an April premiere at New York's Tribeca Film Festival.