Variety has announced that screenwriter Etan Cohen (Holmes and Watson) and DreamWorks Animation are developing The Bad Guys, based on Scholastic’s best-selling illustrated chapter book series from award-winning author Aaron Blabey.
The feature animated film will tell the story from the series about four “bad guys” — Mr. Wolf, Mr. Shark, Mr. Snake, and Mr. Piranha — who, after growing tired of others screaming and running away from them, decide to become a force for good despite their affinity for being bad. The synopsis of the first book is described as follows:
“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?!”
The first Bad Guys book was published in December 2016 in the U.S. and became a USA Today and New York Times best-seller with more than 2.2 million copies in print.
Cohen, known for his live-action comedies like Tropic Thunder and Get Hard, has experience in the animated world from working on shows like King of the Hill and American Dad! He was also a writer on DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
Foundation Media Partners and Berg’s Northside Services negotiated the deal for the rights to Blabey’s book series.
