Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with co-directors Pierre Perifel and J.P. Sans for The Bad Guys 2.

In the sequel, The Bad Guys make an attempt to redeem themselves, but get pulled back into criminal life by The Bad Girls.

In this interview, Perifel and Sans discuss the priciest shots, taking inspiration from action genres and Tom Cruise, and The Bad Guys 3.

Maybe it just feels too good to be bad. In spite of their best efforts, Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell) and his team of “rehabilitated” pals are back and badder than ever in DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys 2. At the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, co-directors Pierre Perifel and J.P. Sans premiered new footage of the sequel, and Collider’s Steve Weintraub was fortunate to not only check out the sequence but also chat with the filmmakers about the not-so-subtle nods, digs, and everything in between. In the movie, the Bad Guys, voiced by Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, and Awkwafina, are trying very hard to be upstanding citizens. However, while on the prowl for day jobs, the team’s attempt at redemption is thwarted when they’re pulled out of retirement by The Bad Girls: Kitty Cat (Danielle Brooks), Pigtail (Maria Bakalova), and Doom (Natasha Lyonne). This newly dubbed franchise is known for the way it “dabbles” in adult genres, pulling influence from blockbusters like Ocean’s Eleven and Mission: Impossible. In this interview, Perifel and Sans discuss how they took a page from Tom Cruise’s book to up the ante, admit that one of their newest characters may pay homage (good or bad) to a certain billionaire, and explain how the cinematography of animation works.
“He’s a Superhuman”: ‘The Bad Guys 2’ Takes a Page Out of Tom Cruise’s Book

“He’s all about spectacle.”

COLLIDER: First of all, the footage looks fantastic. I can’t wait to see the movie. In our summer preview, you said that it’s Mission: Impossible for kids. PIERRE PERIFEL: Yeah, very much so. We’re big fans of Mission: Impossible, and of big action films in particular. I mean, Mission: Impossible is never a comedy, but we’re big fans of those, and we wanted to dabble and play with that genre. J.P. SANS: That was part of elevating from the first one, going from the Ocean’s Eleven to more action-packed, which still has a resemblance to a heist, but with a lot more action. PERIFEL: I think it’s a shortcut. When we say “Mission: Impossible for kids,” it helps people figure out what we’re trying to do. We’re not doing Mission: Impossible, we’re doing The Bad Guys, but it has those tropes. The third act has a sequence which we saw today in the Annecy preview, where the bad guys are breaking the laws of physics to go up a rocket ship that’s going into outer space, and they need to get in before, essentially, they freeze. You mentioned “Mission: Impossible for kids.” Is this sequence almost an “F you” to Tom Cruise, like, “We did it first?” PERIFEL: Tom Cruise does stuff that is so incredibly defying human possibilities. He’s a superhuman. We are playing with CG characters. We can do anything! So, we couldn’t just do what he does with CG characters. We had to go much bigger than what Mission: Impossible is because it’s animation. SANS: And we have to laugh through it. PERIFEL: We have to laugh through it. We have to make it silly and not take ourselves seriously, obviously. We actually did almost like a little behind-the-scenes where our characters are pretending to do the stunt themselves and freaking out when they realize they don’t have the stunt guys to do it for them. It was related to Tom Cruise doing his insane stunt on the plane. It’s obviously so much respect for him and what he does.

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“Is he going to get back into the cockpit in time for them to land the plane?”

I mean this sincerely, he is amazing. He is a god. The stunts that he does, I just can’t believe what he’s done for cinema. PERIFEL: It’s incredible. Unbelievable. I saw his movie three weeks ago. How? [Laughs] He almost died filming that sequence. PERIFEL: Of course. SANS: What’s great about what he has done is he’s bringing the audience into a movie in a different way. Before, it was just a movie and action-packed. Now, he’s talking to the audience and doing all the social that builds to the movie, so it feels like there’s a different segue now for the audience to enjoy a movie, because they know what Tom had done and his preparation, which is why we’re like, “We should do something behind the scenes of them pretending that they have to do their own stunts.” Is this in the movie? PERIFEL: It’s online. SANS: It just came out, actually. PERIFEL: But again, we’re using a page out of his book because he’s all about spectacle, and that’s what we wanted for this. We wanted to put up a big show, a big movie, and then you’re just on the edge of your seat for the entire 90 minutes of this movie. Because, honestly, from the sequence that you saw all the way to the end of the film, you literally are waiting on bated breath. It’s like I said, as soon as you want to show it to me, I’m good.
Yes, Mr. Moon Is Based on Elon Musk

“No, we’re not very subtle.”

Image via Netflix

One of the things that I just laughed my ass off over, and the kids will not understand this, but every cinephile will, is the search for MacGuffinite. I have to ask who came up with MacGuffinite, and what does it play in the movie? Because it’s brilliant. PERIFEL: “MacGuffinite” is a play on the word “MacGuffin,” of course, by Hitchcock, which is that object that the hero or whoever is after during the entire story. SANS: We were trying to figure out what to name this material because we needed a name. We needed somebody to ground that one thing that everybody would follow, and he came up with a few. As soon as we read “MacGuffinite,” it’s like, “That one. That’s great.” PERIFEL: It’s funny, because he was like, “I remember James Cameron in Avatar just did ‘Unobtainium,’” which was a play on words.” SANS: Right. And we make fun of ourselves; there’s a scene in there when, as soon as Wolf says “MacGuffinite,” everyone’s like, “That sounds kind of made up.” So, we’re actually laughing at ourselves because that’s the whole point. I don’t know how big the character is, but is the rich person, Mr. Moon, a play on Elon Musk? PERIFEL: Well, the company’s Moon X. Ah! There we go. So, yeah. [Laughs] PERIFEL: No, we’re not very subtle. What’s interesting is how many years ago you started working on this, and where Elon Musk was then and where Elon Musk is now. It’s two different places. PERIFEL: It works in our favor, doesn’t it? A little bit, I think. SANS: All PR is good PR. Isn’t that what they say? It was about three and a half years ago that we started, so the status was a little different, but we needed a face to this Moon X facilities. PERIFEL: And by the way, this character is never portrayed as either good or a douchebag. It’s more like a conduit to the story more than anything, and that’s kind of cool because, depending on how you stand on the spectrum of liking or disliking Elon Musk, this character is there and you can project whatever you want.
How To Make a Spectacle of an Animated Film on a Budget

“It was very ambitious.”

Image via DreamWorks Animation

You said there’s a sequence in the film that you guys call “Eat It, Vin Diesel.” How does that work behind the scenes? You’re talking about a sequence, and then you’re just, for fun, naming it? SANS: For production. We have sequence numbers, but we always attach a name to it because it’s just easier to track and follow. Every single department will be working on sequences, so you need a name just so you can follow and track. PERIFEL: So, that sequence is 2,700. The Cairo heist, the first one, is sequence 100, and then 150, the Cairo chase. So, we give a name to each scene for production purposes. Is there another name of a sequence in this movie that is as good as “Eat It, Vin Diesel”? SANS: No, that is the best one. That’s the most accurate one. Another thing that I really responded to during the presentation was you guys talking about the lenses that you use to tell the story. For people who don’t realize, anamorphic lenses use a fisheye lens in this one, which is a first for DreamWorks, but also animated movies typically do not use lenses like this. I just saw Elio, and that’s anamorphic widescreen, and it just adds so much. It just pulled me in, and it’s beautiful to look at. PERIFEL: Is just rings so true. When you see it, it just brings you back, and you’re like, “I shot this with a camera for a live-action, big-ass movie.” That’s awesome. SANS: I’ll talk for Pierre because the credit goes to him on the first Bad Guys. He wanted to bring that live-action element to it because there is that sophistication, but for kids. So, there’s that merge. We both love live action, and we think that way with cameras, but from the beginning, he really wanted that essence of live action. He started it with the anamorphic lens and the cinematographer, we just perfected it more and kept going with lenses just to have more opportunities. I thought it was a great call. PERIFEL: I think the first Bad Guys was the first animated film that was fully made with anamorphic. I think Toy Story 4 had a sequence that was, but it was a chunk of the film, not the full thing. We came just shortly after that, if I’m not mistaken. But I think Pixar did a couple of sequences in anamorphic before we did it. Definitely, the first movie shot with anamorphic lenses was at DreamWorks, for sure, but I want to say we are also the first full film shot in anamorphic lenses.

Image via DreamWorks

When you decide in animation to do anamorphic lenses and add fisheye and do anime flavor and all these things, what I really loved about the first movie is it just felt so ambitious, and this one feels even more ambitious. What does that do in essence to the production schedule, to the budget? What is it like behind the scenes, taking this kind of ambition and bringing it to the screen? PERIFEL: It’s a really good question because, as you know, studios after COVID, the box office has not always been here, so the studios tend to try and reduce the budgets or limit the budgets a little bit to make sure that they fall back on their feet after the movie gets released. We are the same thing. We’re part of that wave, as well. So, they were really asking us to reduce those budgets. But at the same time, they’re asking you, “Let’s get people to watch the movie, so make something theatrical and big,” and those two ideas don’t quite work together. [Laughs] So, we had a lot to figure out there. As you know, Bad Guys is the first movie that does that, but we’re using a vendor for a chunk of the footage. Twenty percent of the movie has been animated outside of DreamWorks, and that’s the scene you saw, “Lucha Libre.” That was done by Sony Imageworks, and they did 20% of the footage. So, that helps because it’s abroad. It helps reduce the cost a little bit, allowing us, with our team at DreamWorks, to make them a little bit bigger and fall within the budget. So, that was one big decision that the studio made and allowed us to go big. Also, the Dreamworks team is just magicians. SANS: If I can talk about DreamWorks in particular, what was interesting, at the beginning, we knew we wanted to do something big, but we all had to hold hands because we knew our limitations and how much time we had to do it. I’ll give you an example for effects: our head of effects, Steve Woods, an amazing effects artist, obviously, Pierre and I are like, “I want this and this!” He’s drawing these amazing things, and it’s like, “Well, okay, at a cost. We can do all this for these sequences, but then you’ll have no effects for act three.” So he comes up with different ways and varieties that we can do and pull off the same sequence, being very smart on how we spread the amount of butter that we have. Every department did that. Then we were just very, very creative on finding solutions on how we can get something super big and super massive on the screen with the limitations that we had. So, every department was just holding hands and trying to figure this out because, like you’re saying, it was very ambitious. PERIFEL: The thing, though, is also that it’s a sequel, and in a sequel, as you know, you reuse your assets. You already know the style, so it’s all about building more on top of what you already have as the first film. So, that’s a big help. Obviously, we didn’t have to invent the style. We didn’t have to create all of that stuff. We already had a base that was very strong.
There’s a Battle Going On Behind the Scenes for Animation

From costly sequences to the manpower behind establishing shots, the co-directors break it all down for us.

Image via DreamWorks Animation

Is the movie 90 minutes? SANS: Ninety-three. Every minute costs money, so how much did you know going, like, “We want to be this ambitious, so we’re going to be at about 90 minutes max?” PERIFEL: That’s always the big battle. As a filmmaker, you always want longer and more time to explore your characters so they have the time to settle down, breathing room. Then, the reality is, “Oh, you don’t have the money to do as long.” So, it’s always trying that line. The studio wanted us to fall around 87 minutes, but we knew we were going to be above that. And by the way, we did screenings in storyboard that were 88 minutes, and the moment you start going into production, layout and animation, it always grows. You’re always adding time to your film, by the nature. Storyboard reads really quickly, animation always opens up a little bit. So, yeah, 93 minutes, which works really well. It’s really well paced. I think it would have been great to have a couple more minutes. SANS: A minute and a half. PERIFEL: Just to breathe. SANS: And by the way, adding a minute and a half doesn’t mean adding more shots. It’s really just letting these moments breathe a little bit, because it’s all about the pacing. SANS: But we’re so close to it at this point.

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With animation, what shots are really hard to pull off and cost so much more money than people would expect? PERIFEL: Establishing shots. Establishing shots are very costly, and they are the first ones to get taken off of your animatic because they don’t tell a story. They don’t tell a joke. They don’t have a dialogue. I would argue they do tell a story. SANS: Absolutely. PERIFEL: I’m talking, they don’t tell a story from the production standpoint, from the executive standpoint. SANS: For us, you need it. PERIFEL: For us, that’s what establishes your moment. You take your time, enter your sequence. They’re very costly because they involve a large amount of painting, tons of assets, a lot of rendering time, sometimes crowd characters — usually not a lot of animation for your main characters because you’re establishing the scene, but those are costly shots. You could do without them; the story will still work. That’s why those are usually in jeopardy. SANS: The most expensive shot in the first one was the diner scene, how we open up the movie. PERIFEL: Of course. SANS: It was two and half minutes of just two characters talking. It’s just two characters talking, but it’s every department with a long-running shot. In this one, we also open up with a long shot, but it’s a long establishing shot. That is like matte painting, crowds. Everything was just so involved. There’s not a lot going on in that established shot; we just get closer and closer and closer. PERIFEL: It took months to make that shot. SANS: It took forever because it’s so long. PERIFEL: It’s so technically complicated. SANS: It became a little signature for the franchise, too, because of your decision on doing that oner. We had to do it again. First of all, oners in animation are fantastic. If you haven’t seen Predator: Killer of Killers, when you watch that, there’s a oner where you’re following the action of the character into the thing, and it is amazing. Huge thumbs up on that. SANS: Oh, that’s great. Can’t wait to see it.
‘The Bad Guys 3’ Is Already (Sort of) in the Works

“It’s super exciting.”

Image via DreamWorks Animation

Obviously, this is a franchise now, and it’s clear you guys delivered a home run with the sequel. At what point during the production did the studio say, “You’ve done great. What’s the third one?” PERIFEL: That’s very interesting. That’s a really good question, actually. To be frank, we’re already thinking about it. Well, of course you are! Why wouldn’t you? SANS: Without them asking. PERIFEL: They’ve been asking now, but it’s all about, “Let’s see what this one does,” but they want us to be ready for a third one. So, maybe a few months ago. SANS: Yeah. It’s the same thing on the first one. We were so excited to see where we could go next with these characters that we started brainstorming the sequel before we were even done with animation. But it was just us being excited about it. Naturally, we’re kind of doing the same thing, but now the studio is like, “Yes. Continue.” PERIFEL: It’s super exciting. I’m fascinated by what you think about this. I’ve been asking everyone in animation this week and recently. I looked at Elio recently, and the animation is spectacular. You look at Ratatouille, and the animation is great, but it’s not the modern Pixar animation. Each year, they refine it and it looks even better. What are your thoughts on movies like Toy Story or Ratatouille, or some of the older DreamWorks movies being remastered, where you take a classic movie, something that people love, and then you remaster it like a video game using modern animation? Would you want to see Ratatouille remastered or Toy Story remastered? Or do you feel like these movies never need to be touched again? PERIFEL: I mean, look, you’re talking about tentpole films. They’re masterpieces. Ratatouille, that movie is what made me want to do animation and come here. SANS: There’s got to be a really big reason to remaster it. It can’t just be to remaster. For me, those movies are iconic. I grew up with The Sword in the Stone. I love that movie. I will always think of that movie as The Sword in the Stone, the way it is, even if they remake it. It started because of this authenticity and the hands that were on it that made the movie. It’s hard to think about these movies — that are not that old — being remade. Think about the first Shrek. You look at it now, and you’re like, “What?” SANS: You’re absolutely right. PERIFEL: It’s the same thing with the classics. Would you redo The Godfather or Citizen Kane?

Image via DreamWorks Pictures

I’m talking specifically about animation because of the technology changes that have happened. I look at the popularity of The Last of Us, and all these people are playing the remastered version because the original game was the product of the limitations. It made me think of watching Elio and how incredible the animation was. What would it look like if Ratatouille or some of these other movies were put through this new lens of, “Oh my god, this animation is incredible?” SANS: It’s hard for me to want to remaster, to be honest. Even like Shrek, that you mentioned. I’m sure if you watch it now, there are some things that, now, it doesn’t look great, but there’s something that it gives the DNA of the movie. Directors or story artists will try to do something, and sometimes it falls short, sometimes it looks a different way, but now, that’s what the movie is for the audience. They don’t know if that was the goal or not the goal. Whatever is on the screen, that is now the choice that the creator wanted to make, because you don’t know any different on where they were heading. PERIFEL: It’s a moment in time. SANS: It is. Yeah. It’s like a stamp in time that I wouldn’t want to mess with. The Bad Guys 2 opens in theaters on August 1.

The Bad Guys 2

Release Date

August 1, 2025

Runtime

102 Minutes

Director

Pierre Perifel

Writers

Pierre Perifel, Aaron Blabey