All of Blabey’s books have an irreverent, playful element that appeals to adults and kids. The film-obsessive actor-turned-writer says that’s the only way he knows how to work.
“I don’t know how to do it any other way. I was writing specifically at the beginning for my younger son, trying to get him into books, to make him laugh and for myself. They always had to work on both levels,” he says.
“Part of the joy of that, right from the first episode of the books, is they look like something that maybe [younger kids are] not meant to have in their hands. Like something their older sibling might be reading.”
The Bad Guys books.
It’s been really gratifying, he says, to see The Bad Guys episode 17 has done better than any of the previous books in the series. “[That] runs against all precedent with that age group and those kind of books; it should have plateaued by now. The only thing we can think is they are cliffhangers,” he says. “The conventional thinking is that kids of that age group don’t have the attention span.”
He also throws in a few gags that will go over some readers’ heads that others will understand. “I loved that when I was a kid, getting stuff that was more sophisticated than people expected you to get.”
On Blabey’s wall is the mantra ‘smart/dumb’, which he says is the aim, “striking that balance, striking that place in between”. Dreamworks called it ‘sophisticated/stupid’. That was their version of it, he says. “You can put positive stuff in there – Bad Guys is basically a redemption story – but it’s delivered in such a way that it feels like a fun theme park ride. I love the game of creating something like that.”
It’s been an incredibly productive past 18 months for Blabey, who has written and illustrated the final four Bad Guys books, including the 20th and final installment, and the three Cat books.
“It’s a train that once you get on it, you can’t stop, once you make a decision to push one out every six months, you have to smash one out. There have been periods that have been brutal,” he says. “I wanted each one to be stronger than the one that came before it. That has kept it interesting for me too.”
A Netflix adaptation of Thelma, an animated movie musical first mooted in 2019, will land next year directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), along with some in-development films Blabey isn’t at liberty to discuss just yet.
At this stage, Blabey is holding off adapting Pig, his one picture book.
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“I want to give him the care and attention he needs. Pig just doesn’t belong in that world. He’s an awful character and there’s nothing wrong with that. Perhaps especially for parents, Pig is a welcome visitor at story time because his antics are so deranged, they set a very different tone,” he says.
Besides that, the 49-year-old is “precariously close to being finished forever with the books”.
“The future is looking delightfully unwritten. For the first time creatively in a decade, there will be an open field in front of me.”
