Pierre Perifel, the director of the new Dreamworks animated movie The Bad Guys, had nothing but praise for the author on whose books the film is based. Aaron Blabey, who wrote The Bad Guys books and served as an executive producer on the film, only had one real rule. The film must preserve the personality of the characters from the books.
“I would update [Blabey] regularly and make sure that he was okay with anything and everything we were doing. He was, he was very appreciative and incredibly open-minded, deeply insightful in terms of characters and storytelling and cinema,” Perifel told us. I wanted to make sure that he was okay with, you know, what the liberties were taking because clearly we’re changing the visual look also, you know, crafting a story that was not following his own story.”
Perifel needn’t have worried, though, as Blabey was more than happy for the team at Dreamworks to make whatever changes they needed to. The only thing he asked of Perfifel was that he “stick to the personality of the characters, depicted them in the books.”
Ultimately Blabey’s decision to let the filmmakers make the movie the way they needed to paid off. The Bad Guys is a superb family movie that blends brilliant comedy with hilarious heist shenanigans.
The film follows Mr Wolf (Sam Rockwell), a dashing rogue who loves robbing banks and pulling heists with his crew – Mr Shark, Mr Piranah, Mr Snake, and Ms Turantuala. When a heist goes wrong, though, the bad guys have to learn to be the good guys under the guidance of Professor Marmalade.
The Bad guys is in cinemas now.