The Bad Guys director Pierre Perifel on creating a redemption story in a world of heists

Of The Bad Boysdirector Pierre Perifel found the perfect opportunity to combine all his childhood inspirations for a family-friendly heist animation film. Based on a series of children’s graphic novels, the film follows a group of animal criminals, Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), mrs. Tarantula (Awkwafina), mr. Shark (Craig Robinson) and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos). After he was caught, Mr. Wolf concocts a play to escape from prison, claiming that the group wants a chance to reform for good. Although it starts as a ruse, Mr. Wolf is soon excited by the chance to become a good guy. While the book series begins with the group already deciding that they are going to be good guys, Perifel wanted the film to be an origin story about how they came to that decision.

DEADLINE: Where did the idea come from? The Bad Boys come from

PIERRE PERIFEL: This is from a series of books by Aaron Blabey. He is an Australian author who has written a number of children’s books about these legendary animals who are considered villains or villains and choose to change and become good boys. So they wrote a first draft of a script that actually explores what happened before the first book and why Mr. Wolf, who is the big bad wolf, decides to become a good guy. I participated in 2018 and when I read this first draft, I was immediately drawn into the story. It was a whole story about second chances and redemption and not judging a book by its cover, which was so attractive, but at the same time set in a world of heists and animals that rob banks and drive cars.

On the first page of the book, Mr. Wolf actually talks to the reader, saying, “You know me, I’m the big bad wolf. Well, not anymore. Now I want to run well.” And then you see all their efforts to be good citizens, and they’re really bad at it. But for the film we really wanted to explore what came before that and what Mr. Wolf did to get that decision right.

DEADLINE: How did you come up with the animation style of mixing 2D and 3D elements?

PERIPHERALS: It’s been brewing in my head for a very, very long time. It was something I always wanted to see growing up in France. France is of course a great nation for animation, but it was also a crossroads between so many influences. So I was influenced by American films, American animation, growing up with our own animation and our own film culture… There were also so many graphic novels that I grew up with and collected that led to tons of anime TV. Programs and anime movies.

I also wanted to explore CG, but CG animation has always been very coded. The tools and the computers were very much geared towards a look we’ve always seen from Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney. I think there’s been a push to change that in the last year, starting with Sony Animation, so we decided to embrace that new direction a little bit. Many of the artists on the team and in the studios have always wanted to go the extra mile, so this was the chance to do it. And the studio responded so well to that suggestion.

DEADLINE: You mentioned this confluence of anime and bootleg films and more. What was your main inspiration for this film?

PERIPHERALS: It really started with the cover of the first book in the graphic novel series. It’s a simple drawing of the main characters and they’re all wearing suits, so at the moment Reservoir dogs came to me with this slow motion scene that was so stuck in my head. So my first thought was, “This is going to be Tarantino for kids, with a little A blue brothers turn it.” And then you start to dig a little deeper and realize that obviously Tarantino isn’t really geared for kids, so we kind of had to adapt. So it stopped being like a gangster movie and became more like thieves, with Ocean’s Eleven Awesome, and the complicated nature of the storyline made it much easier for us to adapt and make it a gateway for kids to this type of film.