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If there’s one thing criminals and kids alike respect about Christmas, it’s Santa Claus. The kid part is obvious. The criminal part — at least according to DreamWorks Animation Television’s new holiday special, The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday — comes down to sheer envy over Santa’s unbeatable record of breaking into more houses than anyone in history without being caught.
The half-hour special on Netflix is a prequel to the 2022 DreamWorks Animation feature film The Bad Guys, based on the book series by Aaron Blabey. The notorious anthropomorphic criminals — Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Ms. Tarantula, Mr. Piranha and Mr. Shark — are looking forward to Christmas morning because the closed banks and shops make easy pickings.
Saving Christmas Again
But things go awry when the gang accidentally destroys the city’s beloved Santa Claus balloon, effectively canceling the holiday — and their easy crime spree. So, the group must bring Christmas back — and maybe end up saving the city from a bigger threat somewhere along the way.
The voice cast, which is different from the movie’s, includes Michael Godere as Mr. Wolf, Chris Diamantopoulos as Mr. Snake, Ezekiel Ajeigbe as Mr. Shark, Mallory Low as Ms. Tarantula, Raul Ceballos as Mr. Piranha and Kari Wahlgren as DJ Trudy Tude.
Writer and executive producer Katherine Nolfi, whose credits include Abominable and the Invisible City and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, says she was a fan of the feature and is drawn to stories about misfits who find family with each other. “The thought of taking that kind of subversive, lighthearted sense of humor that The Bad Guys have and combining it with a holiday special was pretty irresistible,” she says. “That was just such a blast to play with those characters in that that setting.”
“These guys are lovable. They’re not out to really hurt anybody, but they do kind of bend rules,” says director Bret Haaland, a DreamWorks Animation TV veteran and executive producer on the special. The production schedule was quick for the 25-minute special, which played toward Haaland’s strengths and experience mixing action and comedy on DreamWorks series such as Fast & Furious Spy Racers and All Hail King Julien.
“They knew that this special was going to need to be done quickly, with a very efficient, almost TV approach to it, so that it would be quick and fun and lively and popping,” he says. “They just thought I was a good candidate for it, and I was very happy to be selected. So, I agreed right away.”
A fan of the film and the book series it’s based on, Nolfi says the biggest challenge was finding ways to let each character shine. “Having five leads with such big personalities and wanting to give them all their due in the story took some figuring out, but I think with Brett’s help — with the whole team’s help — we really were able to highlight these great characters.”
Haaland says he’s used to working quickly on projects like this. Storyboarding took about six weeks, with the animatic taking another six weeks. Then, there were nine weeks of animation and three to six weeks of post-production. “Each one of those stages is a sprint,” he says.
Animation work was done overseas by 88 Pictures, which has one facility in Toronto and three in India. “[I] was literally typing up essays worth of notes down to the frame to get exactly what we wanted,” Haaland says. “I ended up boarding about 80 percent of the episode myself, which is fine, because I like to do that … And then we have a great in-house comp supervisor and effects artists, and they just went to town on it for the big action stuff at the end.”
Another challenge was making sure the special fit well with the acclaimed original feature. Haaland says the folks who made the 2022 movie weighed in and offered a few notes that helped.
“For example, there’s a bit where — spoiler alert — Wolf is inside of a mechanical suit, and he realizes his friends are in trouble,” Haaland says. “At one point, we had this speech between him and Snake, where they had this long talk, and the director of the feature, he’s like, ‘I don’t think they would take the time to do that. Once he knows that his friends are in trouble, he’s going to save them right then.’”
The short production schedule also required the voice roles to be recast. Nolfi says the casting team at DreamWorks was able to find actors who sound like the feature cast while also bringing something new to the characters. “To me, it feels like this great through line from the feature,” she says.
‘Having five leads with such big personalities and wanting to give them all their due in the story took some figuring out, but I think we really were able to highlight these great characters.’
— Producer Katherine Nolfi
One of the creative challenges for Haaland was to find balance in the plot between the playful setup and the more dramatic latter half when The Bad Guys are forced against their best intentions to play hero. “They still have to be The Bad Guys,” he says. “The script was great in doing that, but then you also look for little personality things while they’re in the moment.”
Of course, making an animated holiday special carries its own pressures. A successful one can become perennial and be revisited year after year. And it’s not always easy to get in the Christmas spirit if you’re working on the project over the summer.
“You have a lot of boxes to check, so to speak,” Haaland says. “I think we’re successful in doing that. And I think the reward comes in making it feel kind of alive and special — even including a Christmas song — just trying to put in all those things that make it A) feel like The Bad Guys and B) making it also about Christmas.”
The Good Team
Nolfi credits the collaboration with improving the final result. “I will say, you spend so much time trying to come up with the perfect line, and then a visual Bret can add communicates it so much better, or a toss off effort that the actor improvised,” she says. “And you’re like, ‘Oh, there it is!’ It’s the visual moment, that always nails the joke.”
Nolfi gives additional credit to art director Jonathan Pyun for bringing some impressive visuals to the story, while Haaland credits the sound team — mixing, effects and music — for their work on the special.
The entire experience turned out to be an enjoyable and smooth one for Haaland. “It’s not often that I get a script that’s so well written,” he says. “I also have to say, the guidance from the feature team was just a true pleasure. Those guys are really cool, they’re really fun and they’re very open and very enthusiastic. And it was just wonderful to be able to reach out whenever you wanted to — but I never felt like they were stepping on me, either. There was a lot of freedom. So that was a real pleasure.”
The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday premieres on Thursday, November 30 on Netflix.
