With the release of DreamWorks Animation's The Bad Guys 2 to theaters, JFH's John DiBiase got to sit down with the film's director Pierre Perifel for a Zoom call about the film. You can also watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel!
This interview took place on: July 22, 2025.

Click here for our The Bad Guys 2 movie review.
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JFH (John DiBiase): These movies have a very unique animation style, which I think is very cool and expressive. What inspired that style and how did you want to approach it differently this time?

Pierre Perifel: Yeah, you're right. The goal from the beginning with the first film was to try to differentiate ourselves [from] what had been done before. And I think it was always about putting my own influences, my own upbringing [into it.] Growing up in France -- France is very interesting as a place because we have a massive cinema culture, but also graphic novel culture, literature culture, [and] also tons of painting, obviously. And in terms of animation, a big animation history that is very influenced by the Japanese anime. We have been screening on national TV since late 70's/80's; we had anime on national TV, so we grew up with that in France, and then obviously all of the American animation. So it's a very strong melting pot, and I've always wanted to explore that melting pot on screen. I'd done this on my graduation film as a student, and cut forward to 18 years later here, and 15 years later doing Bad Guys, and I'm like "I want to see something else and I just want to show that on screen," and I think that's how it came.

I wanted to see characters with simply just dots for the eyes and not the full iris and everything. That's something that I always wanted to see in CG animation - just, like, no hair for the lashes, no hair for the brows. And then, the stylization is a weird blend of 2D and CG, and then in terms of motion, bring something that's less realistic - that's what we've been intending to do recently, just more pose to pose, and illustrative posing and just fun cartoon animation, blended or jutaxposed with more deep acting, heavy acting. So you have that range, and you have this very interesting, cool visual style that we developed for the first film, [which] sets it apart from the rest of what had been done in other studios and even at DreamWorks. And, also, it's part of that trend of filmmakers and studios wanting to do something different with animation these days - which is awesome. I think animation has been chasing that kind of CG realistic look for so long, and then after The Lion King [in 2019], I think we reached that, and we're like "Alright, what do we do now? Where do we go from there?" It's like going away from that Pixar style a little bit and just exploring other avenues, and I think Bad Guys is part of this.

And so, in the second one, it's all about pushing the limits and pushing the camera work, and pushing the scope of everything - bringing in a bit more painterly effects, a bit more illustrative, more 2D in the special effects as well, and then reshaping the characters a little bit. But that's really just pushing everything and adding some anime influences even more.

JFH (John): Nice! What were you most excited about returning to this world and these characters?

Pierre: Being with these characters back again, y'know, and deepening who they are, their relationship, opening new doors - Y'know, being able to see Snake in love; it's just a pleasure to explore him like that. When he's been the grumpiest guy in the first one, and now you're just seeing him glow. It's so fun, man. It's so fun. And then bringing in new characters as well. One of my favorite evolutions is the chief of police, y'know. She's awesome in this film. There's something there that --

JFH (John): You mean "the commissioner."

Pierre: "The commissioner," exactly! *laughs* Good one! Yes, the commissioner. She's super fun, and I think we had a blast just pushing her character and developing a new side of her, y'know?

JFH (John): Yeah, definitely. Of all the Bad Guys, who are you closest to and why?

Pierre: Wolf. Wolf would be my character, I think. I love him because - I think part of his journey, in a way, philosophically, is something I relate to quite personally, but second of all, he has that kind of coolness, suaveness, but always broken up by dorkiness and goofiness, which is very close to me in the way I behave. It's like that's the character I'm going to be closer to, yeah.

JFH (John): Yeah, he reminds me of a dorkier Daniel Ocean or something.

Pierre: It's exactly that. We've always said that he's the love son of Danny Ocean and Marty McFly.

JFH (John): Nice! That's perfect. I'm out of time - thank you so much for talking to us.

Pierre: Thanks man, thank you!

DreamWorks Animation's The Bad Guys 2 hits theaters August 1, 2025