The Bad Guys: It's good to be bad
Ever since the illustrated books first landed in school libraries, there’s been a buzz about Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys. A buzz that resonated all the way in Hollywood, in fact, with various studios clambering for a chance to adapt the series into film.
Eventually it was iconic animation studio DreamWorks (The Croods, The Boss Baby, Trolls) that won out, courting Australian author Blabey with the promise of delivering an entertaining family adventure that wouldn’t compromise on the irreverent tone that made his series so popular the world over.
“I went to speak with all the studios in LA and DreamWorks were a no-brainer,” Blabey tells Popcorn Podcast ahead of the first trailer being released. “It just felt when I met with the guys… of course, you should make this movie! This is perfect.”
And make the movie they have, with a first-look this week heralding the launch of The Bad Guys in Australian cinemas from March 31, 2022.
“That cover of the first book is like Reservoir Dogs with a wolf and a shark, you can’t dream for better than that as a premise,” says the film’s director Pierre Perifel. “The premise of doing an action film like a heist movie with a twist of dark humour that Tarantino has is quite a fun movie to watch.”
Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys tears into Australian cinemas in 2022
The inception of The Bad Guys, a New York Times best-selling series that now boasts 14 instalments with six more planned, came about when Blabey, bored with the early reading material being sent home with his young sons from school, turned his imagination to creating something better.
“I was thinking about my love of scary animals when I was a kid, but then also, as an adult, I love Tarantino movies, and it all blended together to become The Bad Guys,” he says.
Mr Wolf, Mr Snake, Mr Shark, Ms Tarantula and Mr Piranha are The Bad Guys – a team of mean and keen criminals struggling with their no-good image. When Mr Wolf gets the grand notion they should hit the straight and narrow, the gang soon finds redemption isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“The long arc of the books has a George Lucas and [Steven] Spielberg feel to it, but mashed up with Tarantino and crime and heist movies,” explains Blabey. “All the stuff that’s really cool and kids are fascinated with the iconography of, but often isn’t for them. It was a matter of taking that stuff and hot-wiring it for kids.”
Bringing The Bad Guys to life in this, the first original DreamWorks project in years, is a stellar voice cast led by Academy Award-winner Sam Rockwell.
“I’ve been a fan of Sam Rockwell’s forever, since his first movie,” says Blabey. “My boys, now they’re teenagers, are crazy about This Is The End and just cannot believe Craig Robinson is in this film.”
Rockwell and Robinson are behind Mr Wolf and Mr Shark, with comedian Marc Maron (GLOW), Awkwafina (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Anthony Ramos (In The Heights) joining them as Mr Snake, Ms Tarantula and Mr Piranha respectively.
“We didn’t want to go for the usual suspects because every character in the books and the script was so specifically written,” says Perifel. “It was not supposed to be just your George Clooney for Mr Wolf, for instance, which we actually thought about, but we needed something more than that.
“It all started with Sam Rockwell, who was the perfect Mr Wolf and he’s the nicest guy, everybody loves him so much. So when he said yes, the rest quickly said yes.”
He continues: “It’s unexpected, but at the same time intriguing, to have a cast like this – and so cool. That’s what we’ve been looking for from the beginning.”
The next challenge for the filmmakers was how to make it appeal to a broader audience than the books’ five to 10-year-old demographic. Producer Damon Ross says that’s where Tropic Thunder screenwriter Etan Cohen came in.
“[Cohen] wrote these really subversive adult comedies and the goal was always to deliver on that clever sophisticated humour that would appeal to adults, but be accessible to kids. The books are so clever on their own, they’re such a great jumping off point for telling a story that has subversive layers of sophistication. Aaron set the stage and we just ran with it.”
