More than three years ago, Feig first received the script for Netflix's film adaptation of the popular series. Despite being a little intimidated about directing something set in such a complex and intricate world, he couldn't get the story out of his head. Feig tells EW that he "just fell in love" with the story because of the relationship between the two young women. “I'm always looking for female friendship stories, those are my favorite movies to do, and I also always wanted to create a world, and I never had the opportunity to do that,” he says. "I was able to scratch the surface with Ghostbusters, but that was still our world. So this had everything I wanted. It was only after I read the script that I started reading the books, and I fell in love with everything in them. They are very dense books." , very inventive and funny, like Alice in Wonderland."
Feig worked closely with author Chainani to make sure fans of the books were satisfied with the adaptation while also creating something new fans could enjoy as well. But he knew that he had a big task ahead of him to visually build a new world from scratch. "I really wanted to work with visual artists to create something new," he says. "If you look at all my movies, you'll notice that I always take on a different genre every time. I want to work my way through every genre, but fantasy was never a genre that I thought I'd end up doing. It's a hard genre to do, and it's a very specific genre. But once I read this and could visualize the world, it was really fun."
The goal was to make sure that the world of The School for Good and Evil was unlike anything that had ever existed before. "Everyone knows Harry Potter, everyone knows Frozen, all that stuff, so I thought, what if we do it based on Art Nouveau?" Feig remembers. "Then all of a sudden all these designs make me feel like a kid in a candy store."
The director recalls being inspired by Art Nouveau architecture from his time in Budapest, Hungary while filming Spy and realizing that he should base this world on that particular visual style "because that would take it out of the classic Harry Potter world, of the totally gothic world, and make it our own where it's both flashy and over the top, but at the same time, we wanted to make sure that while they're extreme characters, they're not cartoons."
Once the style for the costumes and settings was developed, what really excited him about bringing the story to life is how the author explores stereotypical ideas of good versus evil and then turns it on its head. “I think he speaks to what the world is like right now,” says Feig. "Somehow we've gotten into this very divided place where you're either on my side or you're against me, you're terrible and I'm good. It was really inspiring and I won't say easy, but we're fueled by the creativity of what's going on in this world, and hoping that we can, through the world of fantasy, make our statement on that."
While Feig doesn't normally like to make overt political statements in his films, he felt the core message of School for Good and Evil is something everyone can get behind. "[I]t's really just saying, 'Look, we're all people, we're all human,'" says Feig. "Agatha even says it in the movie: 'You're not evil, you're just human.' I think that's a very important lesson to convey in a very stylized and entertaining way. Everything relates to our lives, although it is set in a very fantastic world. There are heroes, there are bullies, there are good people and there are bad people, and there are insecurities, vulnerabilities, pressure, bad decisions, and love, and not giving up on the people you love, even when they're going through a really tough time."
And, if all goes according to plan, he hopes to explore that further with sequels. "The goal is definitely for this to be a franchise," he says. "I mean, this cast is just stellar. I have to pinch myself every time I watch the movie. From Charlize, Kerry and Laurence, to Michelle [Yeoh] and Cate Blanchett as the voice of [Storian], to this amazing new young cast who It's so deep and wonderful and inventive and charismatic, it was really exciting."
School for Good and Evil premieres October 19 on Netflix.
Watch The School for Good and Evil 2022 Trailer
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