DreamWorks Animation's 'The Bad Guys' Cast Features Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos & More
DreamWorks Animation has announced its cast for The Bad Guys, a new animated heist comedy that's set to be released next year. The ensemble includes Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Awkwafina (The Farewell), Marc Maron (Glow), Craig Robinson (The Office), Anthony Ramos (In the Heights), Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd), Zazie Beetz (Atlanta), Lilly Singh (A Little Late with Lilly Singh), and Alex Borstein (Family Guy). Read on for details about the film's plot.
What is The Bad Guys About?
ComingSoon brings word about The Bad Guys cast and sheds some light on this project (which, frankly, I'm hearing about for the first time right now). According to the site, "the film will follow the exploits of a crackerjack group of criminal animals as they attempt one of their most challenging heists yet, becoming model citizens in the modern world." That's a pretty vague synopsis, and also a somewhat confusing one: animals become model citizens...by pulling off a heist? I don't get it. What are they stealing — public approval?
The film is based on a series of books by author Aaron Blabey. Perhaps the synopsis of the first book will give us a better sense of the tone here:
They sound like bad guys, they look like bad guys...and they even smell like bad guys. But Mr. Wolf, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Snake, and Mr. Shark are about to change all of that...Mr. Wolf has a daring plan for the Bad Guys' first good mission. They are going to break two hundred dogs out of the Maximum Security City Dog Pound. Will Operation Dog Pound go smoothly? Will the Bad Guys become the Good Guys? And will Mr. Snake please stop swallowing Mr. Piranha?!
There are fourteen books in Blabey's series, so I expect this movie adaptation to pull elements from several of them instead of being a direct adaptation of any single story.
The Rest of the Creative Team
French director Pierre Perifel, who has worked as an animator and supervisor at DreamWorks Animation for many years, will make his feature directorial debut with The Bad Guys. The script was written by Etan Cohen (Get Hard, Holmes & Watson) and Hilary Winston (Community, Happy Endings), and Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) is composing the score. Rebecca Huntley (Abominable) and Damon Ross (Nacho Libre) are on board as producers, with Blabey, Cohen, and Patrick Hughes all executive producing.
The Bad Guys is expected to be released on April 15, 2022.