LOOK: Best-Selling Children's Book Series THE BAD GUYS Coming Soon to Big Screen

Never have there been five friends as infamous as The Bad Guys. The dashing pickpocket Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), seen-it-all safecracker Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), chill master-of-disguise Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), short-fused “muscle” Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and sharp-tongued expert hacker Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), aka “Webs.” In the new action comedy from DreamWorks Animation, "The Bad Guys" will go good. The film is based on the blockbuster Scholastic book series of the same name by Aaron Blabey.

In the film, Awkwafina is the only female member of the gang and doesn’t cut the guys any slack.  In Aaron Blabey’s book series, Tarantula is actually a “Mr.” But when adapting the story for the screen, Blabey was supportive of the filmmakers switching the character to be a kick-butt female techie. Producer Rebecca Huntley has loved audiences’ reception to Ms. Tarantula. “One of the surprising things was how parents responded to the fact that Ms. Tarantula was representing women and girls in S.T.E.M. She’s a cool, confident hacker, and to have audiences see her as a role model in that regard was wonderful.” 

Additionally, Awkwafina admired how deftly the source material and the script balanced joyful imagination and poignant themes. “The story is pretty existential, and these are characters with sincere dilemmas,” Awkwafina says. “It is symbolic of how we, as humans, see ourselves, how society does and how we embody that—until we realize that we don’t have to be defined by certain things. I like the way that The Bad Guys plays with aspects of good and bad. Those are two terms that we see misconstrued all the time. We see people that look bad but aren’t, as well as people who look good but aren’t.”

From Dreamworks Animation, The Bad Guys is a Universal Pictures International release and will open in local cinemas on April 27.