The Bad Guys 2 trailer: animated sequel is coming to theatres next summer

Released in 2022, DreamWorks Animation’s animated heist comedy The Bad Guys, based on the books by Aaron Blabey, pulled in over $250 million worldwide, launching a franchise that has included two Netflix streaming specials (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday and The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist) and will see a sequel, The Bad Guys 2, reaching theatres on August 1, 2025. We still have a while to wait for this one, but a The Bad Guys 2 trailer has dropped online to give a glimpse of what the movie has in store for us. You can check it out in the embed above.

The Bad Guys director Pierre Perifel returned to the helm for The Bad Guys 2, in which the former criminal outlaws who have been trying to find their place as Good Guys find themselves pulled out of retirement for one last job led by an all-female squad.

The voice cast includes Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, and Awkwafina as the titular group, which consists of former pickpocket Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, Mr. Piranha, and expert hacker Ms. Tarantula. New additions to the cast this time around include Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Brooks, and Maria Bakalova. Lyonne’s character is Doom, a wry raven with knack for deception. Brooks’ character is a snow leopard, the leader of the all-female squad. Perifel told Variety that the character is “Wolf 2.0. She’s super smart, super strong, cooler and younger than Mr. Wolf. Her second-in-command is a Boar. She’s the opposite of Kitty, this bigger-than-life character with a soft heart, but has childish energy. The last character is a raven. She’s super dry and sarcastic, and her humor is on point.” If you’re wondering who Kitty is, that’s a cat that was adopted by Mr. Wolf in the previous film.

Producer Damon Ross said, “The books genre hop and we played in the Ocean’s Eleven space (in the first movie). Now we get to ratchet things up; action wise, stake wise and set piece wise, and lean into Mission: Impossible. Nobody does set pieces better than the Mission: Impossible franchise. We have a pretty not-so-subtle nod to that.” While the first movie was set in Los Angeles, the events of the sequel will see the bad guys venturing out of the city.

For Perifel, making The Bad Guys 2 was appealing because, “We leave the bad guys (in the first movie) as they’re trying to be good. They’ve paid their debt to society, and they’re about to be released from prison, and there’s a whole arc after that where they’re ready to be accepted by society.“

Are you a fan of The Bad Guys (which JoBlo’s own Steve Seigh considers to be a “criminally underrated gem”), and will you be checking out The Bad Guys 2? Take a look at the trailer, then let us know by leaving a comment below.