New DreamWorks Animation feature The Bad Guys opens in theaters this Friday April 22nd. It’s based on a graphic novel series from Aaron Blabey about talking animal criminals in a complicated human world who are out to (possibly) change their image. Director Pierre Perifel and producers Rebecca Huntley and Damon Ross discuss casting, color choices and making DWA history. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This movie is adapted from graphic novels. There have been 15 of them now — and many of them published as you were making this movie. So Pierre, did you go into these new editions of these graphic novels and [say], “Oh wait. We gotta add this in”?

Pierre Perifel: Aaron [Blabey] is part of the team. He’s an executive producer. He would send us the manuscripts of those new books he was going to publish. Unfortunately, no. Our story got locked rather quickly, so we couldn’t bring what is now in No. 10 or 12. And frankly, if we actually make more than one movie, we wanna save ourselves some room, you know? (laughs) So the movie just really borrows from the first four books.

JM: Gotcha. And Rebecca I really like the opening scene — a conversation. It’s very unexpected. Was that a risk you took with deciding this is how we want to set the tone for the film?

Rebecca Huntley: You know, it was. It wasn’t actually part of our original film. It was not there in the beginning. We opened with the chase, and as we progressed, we had all these conversations about “How do we honor our genres and pull-in references to other movies?” Along came this diner scene, and there were quite a few conversations about… how this is going to be received. Is this the best way to open the movie? We fell in love with it. I guess there was a risk in it, but we really all believed in it. Everybody else felt like it was a risk worth taking.

Damon Ross: Absolutely. We were trying to ground our two lead characters and introduce them a little bit up front before we introduce the gang. It really is this core friendship story between Wolf and Snake. Originally it was all right out of the bank and into the chase, and we were like, “Let’s slow it down a little bit.” And obviously taking a page from certain genre films — one in particular — and we fell in love with this idea. But it was bold because it was a quiet, talky scene between two characters to start your movie. Very unconventional.

Left: Pierre, Rebecca and Damon; Right: Jackson

PP: And it’s a very strong statement on what we’re trying to do. You get into the movie and you know exactly what you’re gonna get, which is great. It’s one of my favorite scenes for sure. And technically speaking: clearly one of the most challenging we had to do. One long shot of two and a half minutes of animation is incredible.

DR: I believe it’s the single longest shot in DreamWorks Animation history.

JM: Whoa. Wow. Nice!

PP: It took the main supervising animators at least three and a half months to animate it.

JM: That’s amazing. And you’re right: that Wolf / Snake relationship is so key throughout the entire movie, so it makes sense [why] you want to start it that way. And Damon, one of the really impressive elements for me watching this: the lighting is so good — and in a variety of places. What impresses you the most about the lighting work that’s in The Bad Guys?

DR: It’s that part of the production process where the movie just absolutely jumps off the screen and it really fully immerses you. There was a lighting fury early on. It was so inspiring. It’s the last part of the process, so for me it was just, “I can’t wait to get to this part!” I know in my head it’s gonna look amazing, and it looked even better. It’s extraordinary. And we’ve been watching the movie on our small screens at home for many, many months. We finally got a chance to go in to the DreamWorks campus and see it on the big screen for the first time with the first bit of lighting, and I’ll never forget that moment. We were absolutely blown away.

JM: Pierre, I loved Sam Rockwell’s voice [performance] as Hickory in Trolls World Tour a couple years ago. Is that one of the reasons why he got the gig for voicing Wolf in this?

PP: No. (laughs) We knew he was great anyway. He was fantastic as Hickory, absolutely. But no — we wanted him as Wolf because he was exactly the right [person] for this character. He’s the first actor we reached out to for the whole cast. Wolf was supposed to be that suave, charming guy. The usual suspect would have been George Clooney, and I think for us, the idea was, “How do we make sure it’s NOT George Clooney?” If we want George Clooney, we’ll get George Clooney. If we want Wolf to be George Clooney, let’s get him. But we wanted more than that. I wanted a character that had more grit — more raw. He was supposed to be a wild beast, the Big Bad Wolf. I think Sam was the perfect balance of that charm but also that rawness that he can bring.

DR: And the character in the books: he’s a bit of a goofball at the same time. So he’s cool for sure, but he’s also got this…

PP: He’s more of a goofball in the books than in the movie, actually.

DR: Right. We wanted to capture the essence of that character from the books and bring it to the screen. And Sam embodies all of that.

PP: And when he said Yes… it was a blessing. And frankly, after he said Yes, the rest of the cast (because they love him so much)… wanted to be a part of it.

JM: It’s interesting you bring up Clooney because there is a Clooney reference in the dialogue in the movie. And I just recently watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind for the first time, which Clooney directed Sam Rockwell in as Chuck [Barris]. So I was gonna ask you guys if you thought, “Well maybe since they’re good buddies…” would you want Clooney to come-in with Sam Rockwell if there’s some kind of follow-up. Are you still open to that?

PP: (laughs) That’s very interesting. You know frankly at some point, we had very small roles and we were like, “What if we did typecasting for those very small characters, just as a wink?” But we never got there.

DR: We gotta get him. We gotta get Tarantino. (laughs) In the future movies.

JM: There you go! And DreamWorks loves to do the spinoff shorts as well for DVDs and other things, so you never know. Rebecca, it’s been 30 years since you worked on Aladdin. It has a strong ensemble, just like The Bad Guys. What do you think is so important about animated films with big ensembles?

RH: What’s fantastic is that you get this blend of characters and every character is bringing something really unique and special to the story. And having an ensemble cast — and having a strong ensemble cast — it gives you a rich story. It gives you performances where your characters are enhanced across the board. They’re bringing the story up through their characters. Being able to work with a strong ensemble is always fantastic.

JM: Damon, I have to bring up the car Wolf drives. It is so cool. Another Damon, Damon Moran, designed it. How was it working with him putting that car together?

DR: We’re clearly related. (laughs) It was early on trying to find the design for that car and we knew we wanted to come-up with something so badass. Really cool and different. He did a few different iterations, but I feel like he got the full design of it fairly early.

PP: Damon is an artist I’ve been following and have loved for quite a long time. The idea for the film from the beginning was: When is the time period the film is taking place? At some point we’re like, “Is it gonna be ’70s / ’80s”? There was the idea of a slightly dated, L.A. kind of style. The flex form for us right now is contemporary. But I wanted the car to kind of be classic — a bit of a classic feel to it. It shouldn’t be slick from nowadays. It had to be a muscle car from the late ’70s.

DR: And also that animalistic quality.

PP: In his drawings, Damon was always bringing back a bit of nostalgia to his vehicle designs. We contacted him. He did two or three versions because at some point in the story the car was evolving from being a cool car to THE monster car. He did three different versions or steps of that car and we ended-up right in the middle. The other one was too ludicrous. But it’s incredible. That car… is a character in the film.

JM: Yes. I was in L.A. recently for the Critics Choice Awards, and I went by Universal and saw the giant billboard of the movie. And the car is right in front. It’s synergy, almost, with Fast & Furious, in a sense of this studio really being behind cool cars with these films. It looks really good. And with the characters, you have sort of softer shades of colors. Pierre, can you speak to that decision?

PP: Yeah, I think it was all tied to the look we were trying to accomplish. It’s not a photorealistic style or photorealistic CG rendering. It has more of a painterly feeling to it. And the thing I didn’t want to see… was whenever you have a furred character with hair — we didn’t want to see every little strain of hair or every fiber. We wanted to have something that felt more like a sketch of it, a softness. Give you a feeling of hair without having all the details that CG can give you. Your eye doesn’t get lost in the detail. It’s more focused on what’s important to look at. That’s part of it.

Also the lighting that’s brought and what the art department created is very specific… and unique to L.A. And most of that first act takes place in warmer colors. The color theory behind this is that: whenever we’re with The Bad Guys, it’s in warmth. Whenever The Bad Guys are interacting with The Good Guys, it’s in the cools. And in between that we have two breakout options, which are blue, red, white and black and the very muted gray palette in despair and sad moments. It’s very simple but gives that feeling of following the character and very simple color-coding to immerse yourself in the story.

JM: All that thought behind it is fantastic. We’re doing this interview a couple days after the Oscars. Billie Eilish just won for the No Time to Die song. How fortunate to have her “Bad Guy” song be perfect as the marketing for this movie?

PP: (laughs)

DR: It was inevitable. (laughs) We were absolutely thrilled. The song came out right when we started the process, and we got so many emails. “Well, you’ve got the song for your movie.”

RH: “It HAS to be…”

DR: It’s not in the movie, but it works great in the marketing for sure.

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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