The Bad Guys are back.
The sequel, “The Bad Guys 2,” picks up immediately after the first film as the former criminal outlaws try to find jobs and settle into the real world. Except the gang of animated creatures quickly find themselves pulled out of retirement thanks to a fierce all-female trio led by Doom (voiced by Natasha Lyonne), a wry raven that’s even more sarcastic than Snake. Pigtail, voiced by “Borat 2’s” Maria Bakalova, and a snow leopard, Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks,) round out the new additions. And soon, our bad guys are crashing a billionaire’s wedding, infiltrating wrestling matches and shoot off into space. The Bad Girls hijack a space shuttle — that coincidentally looks a lot like Elon Musk’s SpaceX — as they plan to pull off their heist by launching a powerful magnet from space and steal all the gold. However, the Bad Guys, always one step behind, make every effort to thwart their plans.
Pierre Perifel is back, co-directing this time with JP Sans. With the Elon Musk similarities, Perifel admits, “We spoofed MoonX, SpaceX.” And there’s a billionaire character who wants to conquer the stars. But that’s where the comparisons end. “I don’t think the character of Mr. Moon is really necessarily inspired by Elon himself,” Perifel says.
However, there are notable homages as the sequel amps the stakes in the heist, action and spy genre. It uses all the tropes including a cold open. The scene has the Snake (Marc Maron), Shark (Craig Robinson), Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Tarantula (Awkwafina) dropped right into a heist that ends in a wild car chase through the streets of Cairo. Says Perifel, “We really pay homage to this cold opens from ‘James Bond’ and ‘Mission Impossible.’” Notably “Skyfall” gets a callout in those opening moments.
Here Perifel spoke about homages, working with the Bad Girls, and his plans for a third film.
What were some of the main goals that you had for the sequel?
The first one was continuing the story of these characters and where we left it. It was a great moment to leave them at the end of the first one, where they’re just about to embrace a new life.
So, it was literally starting where we left them and just expanding from there. We were going to go bigger, and really embrace and expand on the genre we had touched on with the first film; very much inspired by these heist and caper movies. We also wanted something that felt even more like a globetrotting adventure and fun action comedy.
On that, you have a cold open, reintroducing the characters that are very much in line with the heist and spy genre. Can you talk about that cold open and what was the decision behind that?
In lieu of that more action-driven film, the idea of having a James Bond-style cold open was one of the first things we were excited about. We wanted to dive back into a moment where the Bad Guys are at the top of their game, and they’re good at what they do. At the same time, it allowed us to set up a couple of inception stories; the car, the first job for Webs. It also really paid homage to the cold opens from “James Bond” and “Mission Impossible.” There’s a “Skyfall” reference there. It also sets up that we are an international movie now, and it’s a big adventure that ends up in space. It was really about playing with the tropes as much as we could, exploiting them, and giving it our own little twist.
Let’s talk about your casting. We’ve got the Bad Guys, all returning, but you expand this universe with the introduction of the Bad Girls led by Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Brooks and Maria Bakalova. How did you find the perfect Bad Girls cast?
Those characters exist in the books, and they exist not necessarily as villains, but they exist as characters that are incredibly well defined by author Aaron Blaby. Doom (Lyonne) is very defined, dry and sarcastic. Pigtail is called Hogwild; she’s bigger than life and super bubbly, but also a little clumsy. Kitty Kat (Brooks) is slick.
Natasha was in our minds from the beginning, and we knew that she was going to have a love story with Snake. And we knew that Marc and Natasha were close friends. We were like, “Oh my God, we can’t wait to pair them together.” For the bubbly Pigtalil, we were like, “What if we find someone completely different from Natasha?” We ended up finding Maria, who has that very childish, almost shy voice, that’s also so cute at the same time. It would be the opposite of what you’d expect from such a big character. For Kitty, we needed to find a very charismatic, full of swagger voice. Danielle came to mind and just popped for us. When we started listening to different voices, she was heads above anything else.
I heard you told Danielle to go off and watch ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ What films did you tell Natasha and Maria to watch?
I don’t think I gave them anything in particular. With Danielle, I wanted her to portray that character who is always two steps ahead. And there’s a scene in that film with Christoph Waltz, who knows that the farmer is hiding the Jews. He’s getting him to tell him. He’s just a pure chess master playing, and Tarantino writes this beautifully, so I wanted her to just get into that state of mind where she is a step ahead.
When you shot the first film, it was during COVID. This time, you have this group of actors in a recording booth, so who went off script and riffed?
Natasha has been doing amazing improv. Craig and Anthony gave us some fantastic improvisation. Craig is such a fantastic improviser, and Anthony related so well. We have a bunch of improv, with Sam, it’s when Wolf is delivering his impassioned speech at the end of the film. I think that Craig and Anthony together were the fun.
It was great seeing the expansion of Zazie Beetz’s character, Diane. Given her popularity after the first film, how much fun was that for you to explore as a filmmaker?
She’s one of my favorite characters. Diane is so brilliant. She’s cool, but also smart and caring. What I love about her is that she’s not perfect. She has a deep secret that she cannot spell out to the world, which is also her Achilles’ heel. Zazie did such amazing work bringing her to life. The charisma, the ooze and the sensuality that comes out of her is fantastic. All of us wanted an expansion of this character, and in particular, the expansion of the relationship with Mr. Wolf. From the first movie, and even in the books, Mr. Wolf is crazy in love with her, without wanting to admit it. She’s so kind, but their relationship can’t flourish yet because there is a bunch of stuff happening that cannot lead to that. All the fans want them to be together. So, it was about how to bring that.
There is a storyline that is very Elon Musk space shuttle-coded. When you were putting this together, things were very different compared to releasing it in July 2025, and he’s very different. What is that like looking back?
What’s really obvious to me is we spoofed MoonX, SpaceX. And we have someone who’s going to conquer the stars. I don’t think the character of Mr. Moon is necessarily inspired by Elon himself. He’s such a cute, little bubbly character in the movie. But it’s weird, to your point, it’s weird that now Elon has been popping as somebody who’s a very odd, big figure now, and enmeshed into all these things with Trump. Now, it’s easy, in retrospect, to say you guys used Elon as a reference, but it was not really the case for us. It was more of a coincidence, if you want, except, again, for the name of the company.
What was it like going into space? And how much of a challenge was it to get that sequence right?
We were looking forward to that. It’s a dream to shoot something like this. The big challenge was to make sure that the audience would be on board with us because it’s jumping the shark a little bit by going and sending a character clinging onto a rocket. It had to feel realistic, so we used a lot of reference footage of NASA and “Ad Astra” and “Interstellar.” Those movies have take-offs that were shot beautifully. We wanted to use that language to make sure that the audience would be on board with us and feel the danger and the power of that. All while the music was supporting this. When they arrive in space, there’s the big release of “They did it.”
Are you thinking about ‘Bad Guys 3’?
Definitely. The main thing is, will the audience love this? Is the audience going to be here? If the audience wants a third “Bad Guys,” we’re already thinking. We have tons of ideas because this world is such a fantastic toolbox, and we’ve laid out thoughts on what a third could be.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
