‘The School for Good and Evil’ first look promises a relatable story in a fairytale world

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers. Proceed with caution if you have not watched the show/movie.

Netflix is coming up with the film“The School For Good and Evil” based on a bestselling book series by Soman Chainani. The fantasy fairytale drama will tell the story of two best friends Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie). They’ll end up being “on opposing sides of an epic battle when they’re swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between Good and Evil.”

Netflix recently released the film’s first-look images and a trailer, in which director Paul Feig takes fans to a dreamy landscape of the institute where the heroes and villains are trained to maintain a balance between good and evil. The news was first cracked by Entertainment Weekly.

In the trailer, Kerry Washington is seen as Professor Dovey in blue dress is the master of the Heroes while Charlize Theron as Lady Lesso, the teacher of the villain wearing a black dress and the School principal (Laurence Fishburne) watching over them all. There are also photos of the leads Sophia Anne Caruso, as Sofia and Sofia Wylie as Agatha engaging in various school activities.

The first “The School for Good and Evil” trailer doesn’t provide much detail on the plot; however, in the interview with EW, Feig revealed that over three years ago he first showed the script to Netflix for the film adaption. He "just fell in love" with the story, as it shows a relationship between two women.

"I'm always looking for female friendship stories — those are my favorite movies to make — and I've also always wanted to create a world, and I've never really had a chance to do that," said the Ghostbusters director. "I got to scratch the surface of it with Ghostbusters, but that was still our world. So this just 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're very dense books, very inventive and fun, like Alice in Wonderland."

To make ‘The School for Good and Evil’ different from other fantasy movies like Harry Potter and Frozen, the director chose Art Nouveau, a style characterized by decorative art, architecture, and design prominence. He came to know about Art Nouveau while filming Spy in Budapest, Hungary. He said he used the style “because that will take it out of a classic Harry Potter world, out of the totally gothic world, and make it our own where it's both garish and over the top, but at the same time, we wanted to make sure that while it's extreme characters, it's not a cartoon.”

He message at the heart of The School For Good and Evil: “Look, we're all people, we're all human. Agatha even says it in the movie, 'You're not evil, you're just human.' I think it's a really important lesson to get across in a very stylized, entertaining way. It's all relatable to our lives — even though it's set in a very fanciful world.”

The School for Good and Evil premieres on Netflix on October 21. Check out the official trailer and the series of photographs which released by EW.